The teens provided Holyoke police with a license plate number, and Springfield police assisted in arresting the men.

Republican file photo

HOLYOKE – Two Springfield men were arrested Saturday and charged with kidnapping, armed robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon after they allegedly robbed two teens on their way to play basketball.

Police said the robbery happened at 1 p.m. in the area of Jarvis Avenue and George Frost Drive. The victims were on their way to the basketball court at Sullivan School when two men approached them, and allegedly showed them a handgun, before forcing them into their car. The men drove the teens to another location and robbed them of cash and a cell phone, police said.

Anthony Muchuca, 25, of Worthington Street, and David Diaz, 24, of Layzon Brothers Road, were being held on $100,000 bail Saturday night, and are scheduled to be arraigned Monday in Holyoke District Court on the charges, police said.

The teens provided police with a license plate number, and Springfield police assisted in arresting the men.

Speaking before 2,300 supporters in a crowded high school gym, Obama touched on his proposals to fix the economy, while drawing comparisons between his plan and that of Republican challenger Mitt Romney and running-mate Rep. Paul Ryan.

President Barack Obama arrives at a campaign event, Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012, in Windham, N.H., at Windham High School. As they rush towards their party conventions, the rival presidential campaigns are trying to invigorate core supporters while reaching out to a sliver of undecided voters who harbor doubts about President Barack Obama yet aren't sold on Republican challenger Mitt Romney. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

By SHANNON YOUNG, Associated Press

WINDHAM, N.H. (AP) — Returning to New Hampshire for the third time this year, President Barack Obama stopped in Windham on Saturday to garner support for his re-election bid, as the presidential campaign heads into its final three months.

Speaking before 2,300 supporters in a crowded high school gym, Obama touched on his proposals to fix the economy, while drawing comparisons between his plan and that of Republican challenger Mitt Romney and running-mate Rep. Paul Ryan.

Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, serves as chairman of the Congressional House Budget Committee.

The president said that the Romney-Ryan plan calls for tax cuts for the wealthy and tax hikes for middle-class Americans. It would also cut into necessary investments that would create jobs and strengthen the economy, he said.

"They have tried to sell us this trickle-down snake oil before. It didn't work then and it won't work now ... it's not the right direction for America," Obama told supporters.

In his half-hour-long speech the president also touched on his education proposals and health care victories, topics which garnered the loudest cheers from the crowd.

He told supporters to remain positive in the final months of the campaign, as his opponent will likely roll out negative ads that will prey on the "frustrations and anxiety" of the American people.

"Remember that we are all in this together," he said, telling supporters to affirm that everyone in America deserves a "fair shot."

Hours before the president was scheduled to speak at the afternoon event, thousands gathered outside Windham High School for the chance to see the president. By 10 a.m. a line of "New Hampshire for Obama" sticker-clad supporters snaked its way around the secluded school's grounds and haphazardly parked cars dotted grassy areas for nearly a mile down the street.

"It's a real honor to have any president come to your town," said Windham resident Lisa Kauhl. "Think of all the towns in the country."

Kauhl, an Obama supporter, said despite the amount of campaigning that has taken place in New Hampshire since the Republican primary in January, she doesn't feel that there's a lot of campaign fatigue in the Granite State.

But Windham Town Moderator Peter Griffin said he disagrees.

"It's horrible," he said. "We're not even through this election and talking about next election ... both parties are going to lose voters."

Griffin, who oversees elections in the New Hampshire town, said he wishes both Obama's and Romney's campaigns would focus more on the issues facing the country, than on things like tax returns.

Both Kaul and Griffin said they believe Obama will face a tough fight to win New Hampshire this November due to Romney's close ties to the state. The Republican is a frequent visitor to the Granite State and owns a home on Lake Winnipesaukee.

"I think it's going to be very close," Griffin said, adding that he doesn't believe some voters are firmly behind their party's likely candidate.

Obama headed to another campaign event in Rochester, N.H. Saturday's events mark the president's third trip to New Hampshire this year. He visited Durham in June and Nashua in March.

Vice President Joe Biden and first lady Michelle Obama have also made multiple visits to the New England battleground state to campaign for the president's re-election.

Romney will make a campaign stop in the Manchester area on Monday with Ryan.

On a day Romney devoted to raising campaign cash in Massachusetts, Ryan accused Obama of raiding the Medicare "piggybank" to pay for his health care overhaul and he warned starkly that hospitals and nursing homes may close as a result.

Republican vice-presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., addresses supporters at a campaign rally in The Villages, Fla., Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012.(AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)

By JIM KUHNHENN & PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press

THE VILLAGES, Fla. (AP) — Who loves Medicare more? President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney's running mate vied for that distinction Saturday as Medicare became the latest flashpoint in a presidential campaign of flying elbows.

The issue is dicey for both sides: Obama is steering billions from the entitlement to help pay for the expansion of coverage under his health care law; Paul Ryan is a champion of overhauling Medicare to make the traditional program no longer the mainstay for tomorrow's seniors — just one of many old-age health insurance choices.

But that didn't stop them from going head on.

On a day Romney devoted to raising campaign cash in Massachusetts, Ryan accused Obama of raiding the Medicare "piggybank" to pay for his health care overhaul and he warned starkly that hospitals and nursing homes may close as a result. The Wisconsin congressman introduced his 78-year-old mother to an audience of seniors in Florida and passionately defended a program that has provided old-age security for two generations of his own family.

"She planned her retirement around this promise," Ryan said as Betty Ryan Douglas looked on. "That's a promise we have to keep."

Campaigning in New Hampshire, Obama said it's a promise that the Republican ticket would tear up.

"You would think they would avoid talking about Medicare, given the fact that both of them have proposed to voucherize the Medicare system," he said in Windham. "But I guess they figure the best defense is to try to go on offense.

"So, New Hampshire, here is what you need to know: Since I have been in office, I have strengthened Medicare."

He hammered the point again later in the day while campaigning in Rochester, N.H.

President Barack Obama campaigns Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012, in Windham, N.H., at Windham High School. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Said Ryan in Florida: "You want to know what Medicare is saying about this? From Medicare officials themselves: One out of 6 of our hospitals and our nursing homes will go out of business as a result of this," meaning Obama's Medicare cuts.

That was a far from exact reference to a 2010 analysis by Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster. He said then that roughly 15 percent of hospitals and nursing homes that provide Medicare services could "become unprofitable" over a decade — not necessarily go out of business — thanks to cuts in payments from the government under the health care law.

But Foster's analysis also said the law would improve key Medicare benefits, solve the "doughnut hole" gap in coverage for seniors, expand health insurance to millions more people, reduce the federal budget deficit and extend the solvency of the government's hospital insurance trust fund by up to 12 years. Hospitals remain largely on board with the health care law, without apparent fear of closing.

Ryan, a deficit hawk and the House Republicans' chief budget writer, has stood out in Washington for laying out tough spending choices that many lawmakers in both parties avoid. So it was almost inevitable that his selection as running mate would vault Medicare to the top of the campaign debate.

Democrats say it's a debate they are glad to have because voters tend to trust them more than Republicans on the big social entitlements. But Obama has vulnerabilities, too, given the Medicare cuts he pushed to expand health insurance for the nation and to keep the costs of doing so in line.

The Obama campaign recognizes that Romney and Ryan have been pre-emptive. The likely Republican ticket tried to neutralize the usual Democratic criticism on Medicare by striking first with a Medicare ad and with their criticism of Obama's health law. "They are being dishonest about my plan because they can't sell their plan," the president said Saturday.

Ryan's proposal in Congress would encourage future retirees to consider private coverage that the government would help pay for through a voucher-like system, while keeping the traditional program as an option.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Medicare over time would spend thousands less per senior under the Ryan plan than under current policy. Critics say that would shift heavy costs to individual retirees. The government could always spend more than anticipated to meet changing realities, but at the cost of deeper deficits.

In New Hampshire, Obama cast the choice on Election Day as one between two fundamentally different approaches to the government's responsibility to its citizens. His approach of portraying Romney's tax and economic plans as a giveaway to the rich was familiar, but seemed to have a particularly sharp bite.

"They've been trying to sell this trickle-down snake oil before," he told his audience in Windham. "It did not work then. It will not work now. It will not reduce the deficit, it will not create jobs. It's the wrong direction for America."

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney walks to board his flight at Martha's Vineyard airport for fundraising events on Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012 in West Tisbury, Mass. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

In Massachusetts, Romney told reporters on Martha's Vineyard that he wishes he could spend more time campaigning in competitive states but must raise money at a furious pace because Obama broke all barriers four years ago.

"That's the challenge with a president who blew through the federal spending limits," he said. "Campaigns now have to spend a disproportionate amount of time fundraising. You appreciate all the help you get, but you wish you could spend more time on the campaign trail."

Asked if campaigns ads are not already saturating the airwaves in swing states, Romney replied, "80-some-odd days to go."

His staff estimated Romney will raise nearly $7 million from fundraising events held Friday and Saturday in Boston, Long Island and the Massachusetts resort areas of Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod and Nantucket.

Romney took a 10-minute break from fundraising Saturday to shake hands and pose for pictures at Millie's Restaurant in Nantucket, Mass.

Romney bought ice cream for several staff members, shook hands with adults and stroked a baby's head.

Alec Gavenda, 13, of Summit, N.J., marched up to Romney and introduced himself and his family to the candidate, who asked several questions about the vacationing group.

Greg Gavenda, 12, told Romney, "my brother has Down Syndrome," to which Romney smiled and said softly, "I figured that."

The boys' father, T.J. Gavenda, told the former governor, "We just ordered our Romney-Ryan yard sign."

But as the campaign entourage left the restaurant, a less-friendly man shouted demands that Romney release five years of personal tax returns.

Although Romney was governor of Massachusetts, he's conceded that Obama's almost certain to win the state in November.

Ryan, too, took a break — to raise money. At an evening reception on Florida's Treasure Island, Ryan drew a crowd of 200 people and raised another $1 million.

Speaking to donors who paid as much as $50,000 to have dinner with him, Ryan compared the United States with Europe, where a financial crisis has led to cuts in benefits for retirees. He said lawmakers there delayed action even though they saw impending problems, and seniors paid the price.

"They ran out of road to kick the can down, and now they have a debt crisis," Ryan said.

Ryan warned the same could happen here if the country doesn't get its hands around its own affairs.

Ryan's stop Saturday at the gated retirement cluster known as The Villages was familiar ground for presidential candidates. Florida has the highest concentration of voters over 65 in the country, with some 17 percent of Floridians fall into that group. Betty Ryan Douglas spends part of her year in Broward County's Lauderdale-by-the-Sea community and has been registered to vote in Florida since 1997.

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Kuhnhenn reported from Rochester, N.H. Associated Press writer Charles Babington in West Tisbury, Mass., and Calvin Woodward in Washington contributed to this report.

To the yearbook editors at the all-girl Kingswood School, Ann Lois Davies' destiny seemed pretty obvious.

The Associated PressIn this March 6, 2012, file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and his wife Ann arrive on stage as they are greeted by former Mass. Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, at their Super Tuesday primary watch party in Boston. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

To the yearbook editors at the all-girl Kingswood School, Ann Lois Davies' destiny seemed pretty obvious.

"The first lady," the entry beside the stunning blonde beauty's photo in the 1967 edition of "Woodwinds" concluded. "Quiet and soft spoken."

The modern feminist movement was just dawning, and even some of the girls at the staid prep school in the wealthy Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills were feeling their oats — if in a somewhat tame way. Charlon McMath Hibbard remembers getting a doctor's note about her feet, so she wouldn't have to wear the obligatory saddle Oxfords.

"We were a rather outspoken class," says Hibbard, who took weaving, and played lacrosse and basketball with the future Ann Romney. "We were just not going to take the status quo."

But considering that their classmate was already betrothed to Willard Mitt Romney — the dashing son of Michigan governor and Republican presidential contender George W. Romney — the "Woodwinds" staff weren't exactly going out on a limb.

Having been first lady of Massachusetts, Ann Romney has already lived up to those yearbook expectations. Now, she's in the running for the national title.

The 63-year-old mother of five and grandmother of 18 has embraced the homemaker image that Hillary Rodham Clinton so openly scorned. On the campaign trail, she's been filmed baking pies and serving her grandmother's Welsh skillet cakes on the media bus. But while Ann Romney is more Betty Crocker than Betty Ford, it's clear she's not going to be Mitt Romney's silent partner. In fact, it was she who divulged that women were on the short list of possible vice presidential picks.

Critics have painted her as the dutiful, starry-eyed wife, standing by — and behind — her man. Friends say that's an over-simplification.

"With Mitt, it's always going to be 'we,'" says Pamela Hayes Peterson, who has known Ann Romney since the sixth grade and was one of her bridesmaids. "She is NOT subordinate, trust me. Did she want to be in the public eye? Probably not. She is so gracious and she loves him so much that, if it's important to him, she will come outside of her comfort zone to be where she needs to be for him. But he will do the same thing for her.

"We're talking about the most unusual couple in the world," she says. "And the public doesn't see this."

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The Associated PressIn this June 30, 2009, file photo, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, greet guests after his official portrait is unveiled during a ceremony on the Grand Staircase at the Statehouse in Boston. Romney's portrait was painted by New Hampshire artist Richard Whitney for $30,000 in private donations and will hang in the lobby of the third-floor Governor's Office. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

"I gather that he credits her for much of his success," says New Hampshire artist Richard Whitney, who worked from Romney's favorite photo of Ann. "He basically told them he was paying for the portrait, and that's what he wanted. I was very impressed with that."

They have been through a lot together. They've built a large family, and a fortune. But there have been hard times — Ann's multiple sclerosis and breast cancer; a stillborn child; the rigors of campaigns, some successful, more of them not. Stung by her portrayal as a "Stepford Wife" in her husband's losing 1994 run for the U.S. Senate, Mrs. Romney famously declared: "You couldn't pay me to do this again."

And yet, she has — in 2002, 2008 and now a third time.

It means again opening herself up to uncomfortable scrutiny and sniggers about the couple's wealth, estimated to be in the $250 million range.

Like her husband, Ann Romney sometimes seems oblivious about her life of privilege. Mitt mentions that Ann "drives a couple of Cadillacs." She shows up in a $990 designer shirt for a TV interview, and in another says the Romneys won't release more of their tax returns because "we've given all you people need to know."

Co-owning a pricey horse that high-stepped through Olympic dressage doesn't help. Comedian Stephen Colbert had so much fun with that one that he declared "horse ballet" his official Sport of the Summer: "So kids, run out and get yourselves a $100,000 Hanoverian."

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The Associated PressIn this Jan. 29, 2012, file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and his wife Ann work on their iPads on their campaign bus as it travels to Hialeah, Fla. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

It has been that way for 47 years, since Mitt Romney — an 18-year-old student at the all-boys Cranbrook School — walked into a party and saw the nearly 16-year-old Ann, who attended Cranbrook's sister school, Kingswood.

For him, the moment was nothing short of electric.

"I caught his eye, and he never let me go," Ann told the Boston Globe in a 1994 interview. "I mean, he hotly pursued me."

The girl he set his heart on was the middle child and only daughter of Lois and Edward Roderick Davies. The immigrant son of a Welsh coal miner, Davies — an engineer and inventor — founded Jered Industries, a maritime equipment manufacturer that has since branched out into naval weapons handling and delivery systems. He also served as mayor of Bloomfield Hills.

Her mother was a cosmetics sales representative who was well into what she thought would be a lifelong career when she married Davies at age 30. After that, she became the dedicated housewife and mother that friends say would serve as Ann's model.

Ann was, in her own words, a tomboy, "playing baseball and football with the boys, and catching frogs and hunting for snakes out behind the house."

At Kingswood, she built a resume that any career-minded woman would have envied. In addition to playing field hockey, basketball and lacrosse, she reported for the student newspaper, the Clarion, volunteered at Pontiac State Hospital, served as a student adviser and was on the student council. She won a regional award for her weaving and also acted in several plays, including "Boeing My Way" and "Solomon and the Balkis."

"She had lots of depth," says Sue Brethen Lapelle, a boarding student who has fond memories of weekends at the Davies home and swimming in their pool.

And now, she had Mitt.

"They were so cute together and so happy together," says Lapelle, an Atlanta interior designer who had briefly dated Romney. "There was never one ounce of any question that they weren't supposed to be together, I guess."

Romney proposed to Ann at his senior prom, and she accepted. According to Ann, it was she who initiated her conversion to Mormonism.

Edward Davies had been brought up in the Welsh Congregational tradition; his wife described their family as Episcopalian. In truth, Davies wasn't much for organized religion.

But his daughter had been quietly searching for a spiritual home. While Mitt was away at Stanford University in California, Edward Davies agreed to allow George Romney to send some missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to speak with his daughter.

When she was baptized, Gov. Romney officiated.

In 1967, Ann entered Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. By then, Mitt Romney had suspended his studies to fulfill his missionary duties in France, and she saw him there during a semester abroad in the mountains just southeast of Grenoble — site of the Winter Olympics.

Donlu Thayer was, by her own estimation, a "nerdy, booky person" who always seemed older than her years. Ann, by contrast, was a "bubbly, beautiful thing."

One weekend, when everyone else was running off to go skiing or shopping, Thayer decided to visit Soeur Macaire, an elderly shut-in from the local Mormon congregation. To her surprise, Ann — then a freshman — offered to go with her to the dingy little apartment.

To her, that was "the essence of Ann."

"She could have been doing ANYTHING else, and she came with me to see that woman — and nobody else did," says Thayer, who went on to teach two of the Romneys' sons at Brigham Young. "Bottom line is Ann Romney is the kind of woman I would instinctively HATE. And I love her."

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The Associated PressIn this March 21, 1969, file photo, Ann Lois Davies and Willard Mitt Romney, second and youngest son of former Michigan Governor and Mrs. Lenore Romney, married in a civil ceremony at the brides family home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. The couple then resumed their studies at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, after a brief honeymoon. (AP Photo)

On March 21, 1969, the couple were married in a civil ceremony at the Davies home. Among the 300 guests attending the reception at the Bloomfield Hills Country Club were the presidents of Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., and then-Rep. Gerald R. Ford.

The following day, the Romneys flew to Utah for a formal "sealing" ceremony at the grand Salt Lake Temple. After a honeymoon in Hawaii, the newlyweds set up house in Provo, where Mitt had enrolled at BYU.

The two children of privilege rented a $62-a-month basement apartment with glued-together carpet remnants covering the cement floor.

"They were not easy years," she said. "Mitt and I walked to class together, shared housekeeping, had a lot of pasta and tuna fish and learned hard lessons."

The young family lived off the proceeds from the sale of American Motors shares — purchased with Mitt's birthday money by his father. Critics would scoff at this self-imposed austerity, but Ann Romney said the couple were determined to make their own way.

"The funny thing is that I never expected help," she told the Globe. "My father had become wealthy through hard work, as did Mitt's father, but I never expected our parents to take care of us."

The couple's first son, Taggart, was born there in 1970.

After Mitt graduated from BYU in 1971, the couple moved to the wealthy Boston suburb of Belmont so he could attend Harvard. Ann took night classes through Harvard's Extension School and completed her BYU bachelor's degree, with a concentration in French, in 1975.

After Tagg, the babies came at fairly regular intervals: Matt in 1971, Josh four years later, Ben in 1978 and Craig in 1981. In between Ben and Craig, Ann Romney lost a child several months into her pregnancy. It, too, was a boy, a source close to Mrs. Romney confirmed. The couple have never spoken publicly about their loss.

It might surprise many people to learn that Ann Romney entered politics long before her husband did.

In April 1977, she was elected to a one-year term representing Precinct 8 on the Belmont town meeting. Among the big issues, says fellow member Maryann Scali: Should the town build a high school?

"She went around and rang every doorbell and got elected," says Scali, now in her 43rd year as a meeting member. "Who could NOT vote for a person like Ann? She was young and beautiful and energetic and enthusiastic and everything a voter wants in a person to represent them."

Records show that Romney had perfect attendance. When her term was up, she went back to the job that has come to define her — mother.

She makes no apologies for that. This year, Democratic commentator Hilary Rosen set off a clamor when she suggested that Ann Romney was unfit to comment on economic matters because she "never worked a day in her life." Ann Romney, in her first-ever tweet, responded by saying: "I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work."

More than a decade would pass before her husband would seek office, but Mrs. Romney played a central role in his decision, too.

In 1992, Edward Davies was staying with the Romneys while undergoing treatment for the prostate cancer that would soon kill him. One day, while Ann was putting away dishes in the kitchen, he grabbed her.

"He said, 'Ann, you've got so much living to do. Think of the exciting things that will happen in the world. I'm so jealous of all the wonders you're going to see in your lifetime,'" she told a reporter. She said her father's words "made me realize that, well, I don't want to look at my life 30 years from now and say, 'Gee, I wish I'd done that.' I don't want to have regrets. I don't want to say, 'I'm sorry we didn't try this or that.'"

A few days later, she told her husband he should run against Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. He lost by 17 points.

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The Associated PressIn this March 5, 2012, file photo, Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, wipes lipstick off his face after kissing him at a campaign rally in Zanesville, Ohio. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

In late 1997, Ann Romney felt numbness in her right leg, followed by chronic fatigue and other debilitating symptoms.

"I could hardly walk," she told a crowd in Iowa last December. "And I couldn't get out of bed."

Shortly before Thanksgiving 1998, an MRI revealed that she had multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system.

She became despondent, "thinking that my life was over," she told the Iowa crowd. "That this was the way I was going to always be, and that I was really feeling pretty sorry for myself."

It was, as she called it, "my darkest hour." But it also reaffirmed her husband's commitment to her.

"What he did was say, 'Look. This isn't fatal. We're gonna be OK. I don't care that you can't make dinner every night. It doesn't matter to me. I can eat peanut butter sandwiches and cold cereal for the rest of my life. As long as we're together, we can handle everything.' And that gave me, honestly, the permission just to be sick for a while, and just to accept the fact that I had to learn how to deal with this. It was a great time in my life where I had a lot of self-reflection and starting to think what was most important in life."

In February 1999, Mitt Romney agreed to serve as president and CEO of the foundering organizing committee for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The couple moved to Park City, Utah, where Ann Romney rediscovered horseback riding — a "joy therapy" that she credits with restoring her health, along with acupuncture, reflexology and other holistic measures.

The theme for that year's torch relay was personal heroes. Mitt Romney selected his wife as his. Cindy Gillespie, who was in charge of the relay and later served Romney as a top gubernatorial aide in Massachusetts, says Ann Romney practiced with props to prepare for her one-fifth-of-a-mile leg.

In his 2007 book, "Turnaround," Mitt Romney described the emotion of jogging alongside her. "There was the love of my life running the Olympic torch down the street. We had wondered if she would be in a wheelchair by that time. Among my children and me, there was not a dry eye."

Following the Olympics, Mitt Romney announced his bid for Massachusetts governor. His wife largely avoided media interviews, but was active behind the scenes. After he took office, Romney appointed Ann as his unpaid liaison to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Despite her earlier protestations, when Mitt Romney announced his first presidential bid in 2007, his wife was fully on board. She even had her own website, complete with family recipes. It was a lost cause; Romney dropped out of the race in February 2008 despite winning 11 primaries and caucuses.

Later that year, Mrs. Romney was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, a noninvasive type of breast cancer; she underwent a lumpectomy and is reported to be cancer-free.

Ann Romney has said she begged her husband not to run again. So when Lapelle saw her old prep school friend this past April at a 63rd birthday party and fundraiser, thrown by Donald and Melania Trump at their at their 32,000-square-foot triplex on New York's Fifth Avenue, Lapelle asked her friend why she would put herself through something like that again.

When Mitt said he wanted to try again, Lapelle recalls Ann saying her first reaction was, "Are you kidding me?" But after some thought, Ann asked him to answer one question: "Can you fix the economy?"

"And he looked her in the eye and said, 'Yeah,'" Lapelle says her friend told her. "And so she said to him, 'I'm on your team.'"

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Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

Allen G. Breed is a national writer, based in Raleigh, N.C. He can be reached at features(at)ap.org. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/(hash)!/AllenGBreed.

fter Joe Biden tripped up his boss by voicing support for same-sex marriage while the president remained on the fence, speculation was rampant about whether the remarks were spontaneous or deliberate.

The Associated PressIn this July 12, 2012, file photo, Vice President Joe Biden addresses the NAACP annual convention in Houston. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)

By ADAM GELLER, AP National Writer

After Joe Biden tripped up his boss by voicing support for same-sex marriage while the president remained on the fence, speculation was rampant about whether the remarks were spontaneous or deliberate.

But to those who know Biden, there was no doubt. He was just speaking his mind.

"That's what you get," said John Marttila, a political strategist who worked alongside Biden in his first Senate campaign, and many others since. "You never have to worry, you never have to ask yourself the question, is this politician really telling me what he cares about, what's on his mind? Not with Joe."

Biden long has cast himself as a regular guy, who still relishes wading into a crowd or taking a microphone, searching for a way to connect with middle-class voters who remind him of his own Scranton, Pa. roots. He is the intensely devoted family man, prizing relationships strengthened by tragedy and turmoil that reconfigured a life of sometimes extraordinary luck.

But this is also the Joe Biden who is known for strong opinions grounded in experience and study, as well as the self-regard that makes him a wild card.

Biden took on the vice presidency after a 36-year Senate career he hoped would lead to the Oval Office. Instead, his assignment over the last 3 1/2 years has been to figure out a role in a White House where he is a junior partner despite his seniority, a well-known member of the establishment grafted to a team that promised to change politics as we know it. His job, which comes with few clearly defined responsibilities, has been to provide value to Obama, while staying true to himself.

It has not always gone smoothly, largely because of Biden's well-known tendency to speak out loud and at length. But he has settled into the vice presidency while holding tight to the touchstones of his identity.

"There's no delusions of grandeur. He's not president. ... Before Joe went into that situation, he had to resolve that in himself," said his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, a political confidant since she managed his first campaign for a county seat in Delaware.

Biden has emerged as a very different vice president from predecessor Dick Cheney. He has worked hard to make his case on issues from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the pursuit of health care reform, while accepting his place in a hierarchy that gives him the president's ear, but not his decision-making power.

To understand Biden as vice president, though, requires knowing the journey that shaped him and brought him to this point. It began in a wood-frame house on Scranton's North Washington Avenue, steps from the last stop on the streetcar line. In the Biden house, every Sunday started with Catholic Mass and ended with family, the younger ones listening in as the older men hashed out politics around the kitchen table.

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The Associated PressIn this Feb. 21, 2012, file photo, President Barack Obama, accompanied by Vice President Joe Biden, speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington, on the importance of the agreement passed by Congress to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

In fact, Biden, who turns 70 in November, grew up in a solid, middle-class neighborhood. Even so, his parent's decision to move in with his grandfather when Biden was 5 was a step backward. Biden's father had done well as a manager for a company servicing merchant marine ships. Then he lost his savings in a pair of business ventures, including one with a partner who ran off with the money. Scranton offered refuge.

Biden's father found work cleaning boilers and selling pennants, before eventually managing a car dealership.

"My dad, Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., was a man of few words. What I learned from him, I learned from watching," Biden wrote in his 2007 autobiography. "He'd been knocked down hard as a young man, lost something he knew he could never get back. But he never stopped trying ... Get up! That was his phrase, and it has echoed throughout my life."

Biden and his friends spent their days in Catholic school, returning home to waiting mothers before heading out into the neighborhood's ball fields and woods.

The Biden household was a gathering point, welcoming various uncles and the friends of Biden's grandfather. When Joe Biden's family moved again to the suburbs of Wilmington, Del., the family drove back nearly every weekend.

"I remember distinctly as not having any feeling like he left," says a Biden childhood friend, Tom Bell, now an insurance agent in the Scranton area.

Biden's family and friends recall him as a leader. Bell recounts that after a neighborhood bully picked a fight, friend Charlie Roth called Biden, then 12 or 13 and living near Wilmington. When the Bidens returned the following weekend, Joe beat up the bully on their behalf, Bell says.

Joe Biden went on to the University of Delaware. On spring break of his junior year, he and a group of friends ended up in the Bahamas, where Joe met Neilia Hunter, a senior at Syracuse University. Smitten, he applied to law school at Syracuse so they could be together. The couple married and moved to Wilmington, where Biden accepted a job as a corporate lawyer. But he quickly became disillusioned representing companies and left for a job with the public defender's office, practicing civil law part-time.

His boss took him along to Democratic political meetings and Biden was invited to run for a county council seat, representing a majority Republican district. Biden didn't even know where the council met, but he ran and won in 1970. The following spring, he was asked to help recruit a candidate to run against Cale Boggs, a Republican former governor and congressman seeking his third term in the U.S. Senate.

On a summer morning in 1971, the 28-year-old Biden was shaving in a Delaware motel room when he heard a knock on the door. A pair of state Democratic leaders, one of them a former governor, barreled in. Biden, standing in his underwear with shaving cream cupped in his hand, worried he'd gotten himself into some sort of trouble.

We think you should be our Senate candidate, the men told him. Biden's first thought: Was he even old enough under the Constitution to take the oath of office?

"When you're from a small state, you've got to be extra good because everybody knows you," said Henry Topel, the party chairman who was one of the two men who asked him to run. "I was extremely impressed with Joe. He was a phenomenal orator ... and above all he knew his subject and he certainly knew the road he was on. He was a young shining star."

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The Associated PressIn this Dec. 13, 1972 file photo, the newly-elected Democratic senator from Delaware, Joe Biden, is shown on Capitol Hill in Washington. In May, after Joe Biden tripped up his boss by voicing support for same-sex marriage while the president remained on the fence, there was speculation about whether the remarks were spontaneous or deliberate. But to those who know Biden, there was no doubt. He was just speaking his mind. (AP Photo, File)

"I've been following politics for 40 years and there's never been a race in 40 years that was as much of a longshot as this," said Ted Kaufman, a volunteer in that campaign who became Biden's long-time chief of staff before being appointed to serve out his final Senate term. "I told him he couldn't win."

Biden's shoestring campaign, headed by sister Valerie, cranked out weekly brochures on newsprint delivered by volunteers to nearly every Delaware home. Playing off the state's size and the candidate's knack for connecting with voters, the campaign leapfrogged to living room coffee gatherings, often six or seven in a day, attended mostly by housewives. Biden campaigned alongside his wife, sometimes with their three young children in tow.

"He presented himself the way he was. There's no daylight between the private person and the public persona and there hasn't been with Joe," his sister said.

Pitted against a popular incumbent, Biden took to opening his suit jacket to reveal a button on the inside of the lapel that said "I like Cale," putting voters at ease, said Ron Williams, who covered the race as a reporter for the Wilmington News-Journal.

Biden won by a little more than 3,000 votes. He turned 30 little more than a month before being sworn in, making him one of the youngest people ever elected to the Senate.

Weeks later he was in Washington to hire staff, leaving his wife in Delaware to shop for a Christmas tree. The office phone rang and Valerie picked up. "When she hung up the phone, she looked white," Biden wrote.

The Associated PressIn this photo provided by Sen. Joe Biden's office, then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., holds his daughter Ashley. In May, after Joe Biden tripped up his boss by voicing support for same-sex marriage while the president remained on the fence, there was speculation about whether the remarks were spontaneous or deliberate. But to those who know Biden, there was no doubt. He was just speaking his mind. (AP Photo/Sen. Biden's office)

In a speech this past May to families of U.S. soldiers killed in action, Biden recalled how the tragedy plunged him into anger and depression.

"For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide," he told the group.

"I remember being in the Rotunda, walking through to get to the plane to get home to get to identify (the bodies) ... I remember looking up and saying 'God ... you can't be good. How can you be good?'"

Biden's sister moved in to care for her nephews. Biden told family and friends he would take a pass on the Senate.

But Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and others pleaded with Biden to give the job six months, with colleagues urging him to immerse himself in his work. Kaufman recalls days when Biden seemed fine, and then the next "it'd be every bit as bad as the first day. He'd just be coming in like he'd been blown away."

Biden found a comfort zone in Washington by maintaining one outside it, taking Amtrak home to Wilmington each night to be with his sons. In the Senate, he became a student and observer of storied figures like Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey.

"He's a very hierarchical guy," Kaufman said. "His basic approach was I'm junior, they're senior. ... He was very comfortable in giving deference to the senior members."

In 1975, a friend passed him the phone number of Jill Jacobs, an aspiring teacher eight years his junior, and the two began dating. But Biden proposed six times before she agreed. They married in 1977.

By 1980, Biden had built a reputation in the Senate as a comer, with some people encouraging him to think about a future run for the presidency, though he was not yet 40. In his book, Biden writes that he resisted because he could not yet answer a question posed by Marttila about why he wanted to be president.

With Ronald Reagan nearing the end of his second term, Biden decided the time might be right. He traveled the country as a candidate in 1987, still little known outside Delaware. That changed after Reagan nominated conservative judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court to replace retiring moderate Lewis Powell. The nation's attention turned to the Senate Judiciary Committee and its chairman, Biden.

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The Associated PressIn this Sept. 16, 1987, file photo, then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Joseph Biden Jr., of Delaware, left, speaks with Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., during the confirmations hearings for Supreme Court nominee Robert H. Bork on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/John Duricka, File)

Biden admitted making mistakes, but insisted it would have no effect on his candidacy. Days later, he withdrew from the race and called Judiciary Committee colleagues into a private meeting.

"He was devastated. It was a hammer blow to the gut," said former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., who was in the room. "He called us in and he said 'I'm very hurt, I'm embarrassed and I think if I've brought any embarrassment on any of you ... I'd be glad to step down. It was very dramatic. There wasn't anything contrived. It was just silence."

The silence was broken by Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., followed by other senators, noting that at one time each of them had made mistakes. They urged Biden to stay on. He did, presiding over hearings that led to Bork's rejection, but were praised for maintaining a respect that allowed all sides to air their views.

Biden has said he viewed the Bork hearings as the beginning of a vindication. But his record four years later in presiding over the controversial nomination of Clarence Thomas — hearings charged with accusations of racism and sexism — remains the target of fierce criticism. While Biden writes about the Bork hearings at length in his book, he never mentions the Thomas confirmation.

During Biden's short-lived pursuit of the presidency, Marttila recalls, he'd been concerned when a staffer mentioned Biden was popping 10 Tylenols at a time. But the headaches went overlooked in the blur of campaigning. In early 1988, though, Biden collapsed in a Rochester, N.Y., hotel room after a speech. Doctors discovered an aneurysm below the base of his brain.

His survival and recovery left Biden feeling that he'd won a second chance, sharpening his sense of priorities.

Back in the Senate, he pushed to increase funding for prosecution of domestic violence and sexual assault, and assistance to victims, winning passage of legislation in 1994 that became law. He also became an increasingly outspoken leader on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urging Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to intervene in the wars splitting the former Yugoslavia.

After backing the second President Bush's decision to send troops into Iraq, he became a critic of the war and the administration. But, as Biden did with the Balkans, he accompanied his rhetoric on Iraq with engagement, drawing up a proposal for a "soft partition" of the country into three ethno-religious regions and meeting with Iraqi leaders and military commanders. When Biden traveled to Iraq as vice president late last year before the U.S. pullout, it was his 16th trip to the country.

But after seeing Bush win a second term in 2004, he began to think anew about seeking the presidency.

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The Associated PressIn this July 19, 2012 file photo, Vice President Joe Biden campaigns at the Plumbers & Pipefitters Local Union 189 in Columbus, Ohio. (AP Photo/Jay LaPrete, File)

Instead, when Obama became the nominee and asked Biden to join the ticket, the Delaware veteran agreed on one condition.

"I said I want a commitment from you that in every important decision you'll make, every critical decision, economic and political as well as foreign policy, I'll get to be in the room," Biden said in a late 2008 television interview.

Obama turned to Biden early, asking him to oversee administration of the $787 billion in economic stimulus money approved by Congress. Though Obama came to Washington opposing the Iraq war Biden initially supported, the vice president's deep knowledge of the country made him a natural point-man in the administration's dealings with Iraqi leaders, as well as defender against critics of the U.S. withdrawal.

Still, the agreement left important questions unsettled, with "a lot of uncertainty" about how Obama intended to use his vice president, Biden's former chief of staff, Ron Klain, said in an interview with The Associated Press in late 2010.

While Obama asked for Biden's opinion, he made key decisions that were at odds with that advice. Biden, for example, advised that the country's financial condition was too shaky to pursue health care reform, but Obama moved ahead.

Yet when Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in March 2010, Biden was emphatic in recognizing the achievement and offering congratulations. He was caught on an open microphone proclaiming the legislation a big deal, with an expletive inserted for emphasis.

Biden also was the administration's most strident opponent of proposals to sharply increase the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Obama wound up dispatching 30,000 additional soldiers, but his decision to do so quickly and to set an end-date for most U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan has widely been seen as evidence of Biden's influence.

Biden "played a very important counter-role to the generals," said Jules Witcover, a veteran political journalist who wrote a 2010 biography of Biden.

"Although you could say Biden lost that fight," because the additional troops were deployed, "in the long run he has prevailed, or is in the process of prevailing, with the combat troops coming out of Iraq and the movement toward getting out of Afghanistan," Witcover said.

Biden also has shown a willingness to give his boss credit, even when his advice has been rejected, mostly notably after he urged Obama not to go ahead with the U.S. military raid that killed Osama bin Laden. When the raid succeeded, he praised the president's resolve and decisiveness.

The relationship between Obama and Biden has worked, say those who know them, because Obama is comfortable hearing the vice president's counsel, but also because of Biden's embrace of his role as adviser rather than top decision-maker.

"They've been through a lot together and there's a lot of mutual respect there," Kaufman said. "The secret is Obama's stood by the deal and Biden's stood by the deal."

She is 5-foot-11 and world famous. Sometimes she inspires awe in her admirers. She has been accused of being the angry type. So when Michelle Obama meets people, she likes to bring things down to earth with a hug.

The Associated PressIn this July 13, 2012, file photo, first lady Michelle Obama smiles as she honors the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award winners in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

She is 5-foot-11 and world famous. Sometimes she inspires awe in her admirers. She has been accused of being the angry type. So when Michelle Obama meets people, she likes to bring things down to earth with a hug.

Erin Thesing got one, before the young schoolteacher introduced Mrs. Obama to a crowd of a thousand people at a recent campaign rally in Philadelphia. As the first lady approached, Thesing extended her hand in greeting.

"She brings me in for the hug, and says, 'It is so nice to see you, Erin.' She knew my name," Thesing remembers, her face bright with the memory.

It happens over and over, wherever Michelle Obama goes — the human connections made by a charismatic public person, and the careful construction of a very public figure.

How much of this is real, and how much is the kind of strategy that's behind every first lady's image? Can it be both? Is it even possible, in this Internet age, to know where the persona ends and the person begins?

Mrs. Obama's representatives declined to make her available for an interview. And why would they? Her image is already set. This 48-year-old woman has already shared everything about herself that she wants us to know:

She had a working-class, two-parent childhood on the South Side of Chicago, then attended Princeton and Harvard Law. Next came marriage and two daughters with an ambitious man named Barack Obama. She held a series of corporate, government and nonprofit jobs in her hometown.

As the president's wife, Mrs. Obama has rebounded from 2008 campaign accusations that she carries racial grudges to define herself as "mom in chief." She's an advocate for healthy living and military families; a workout enthusiast with arms so taut they inspired their own Twitter feed.

Despite aspersions against the strength of her patriotism and parodies of her as a food-policing busybody, Mrs. Obama's Gallup favorability ratings have averaged a sound 66 percent as first lady. Laura Bush averaged 73 percent; Hillary Rodham Clinton 56.

This popularity is tended as carefully as Mrs. Obama's White House vegetable garden. The tools are her social causes, and the force of her own personality.

The Associated PressIn this Feb. 10, 2009, file photo, first lady Michelle Obama hugs children after reading a book at Mary's Center in Washington. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Perhaps that personality — the real Michelle Obama — can be glimpsed through the eyes of people on the receiving end of those hugs.

In Thesing's case, she and the first lady chatted for five minutes about things like Thesing's students at a predominantly black charter school, Beyonce's "Let's Move!" remix and the Obama family dog. Thesing had been impressed by many famous political figures on the campaign trail in her native New Hampshire, but Mrs. Obama inspired stronger feelings.

"Somehow she has this ability within 30 seconds to make you feel you can open up to her," Thesing says. "To make this instant connection."

Before the campaign rally, Thesing had fully absorbed the first lady's image. She viewed her as a role model: an assertive woman who successfully juggles her career, family and community service, who works out daily, has a great wardrobe and can relate to anyone.

Now that she has met her, Thesing is convinced that the image is real.

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She was a hugger long before she was a public figure, say people who have known Mrs. Obama for years, and yearned to make a difference long before she became first lady.

In 1991, when Michelle Robinson was about 27 years old, she worked in a prominent Chicago corporate law firm, doing intellectual property work for entertainment companies. One supervisor, a partner named Quincy White, recalls that the young lawyer wasn't satisfied with the nature of her work: "I couldn't give her something that would meet her sense of ambition to change the world," White says in the biography "Michelle," by Liza Mundy.

So she wrote a letter to Valerie Jarrett, a deputy chief of staff to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who would soon become a mentor and close friend to Michelle and her fiance, Barack.

She took a job as an assistant to the mayor, with a lower salary than at her law firm. Soon she became an economic development coordinator, responsible for working with businesses to foster growth and jobs. After two years with the city, she left to be director of the Chicago branch of Public Allies, a nonprofit that trains young people for leadership in public service.

In 1996, she became an associate dean at the University of Chicago, directing efforts to engage students in local community service. Her first daughter, Malia, was born in 1998; Sasha arrived in 2001. A year later, with Barack in the Illinois Legislature, she moved to the University of Chicago Hospitals as executive director of community affairs.

After her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, she was promoted to university vice president. She took leave from that job to help his presidential campaign.

Finally, as first lady, she was in a position to actually fulfill her ambition to "change the world."

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The Associated PressIn this May 3, 2011, file photo, first lady Michelle Obama dances with students at Alice Deal Middle School in northwest Washington, during a surprise visit for the school's Let's Move! event. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

"Let's Move!" is now a sprawling effort that includes corporations, teachers, government, Beyonce, and more. But the centerpiece is Mrs. Obama herself.

So one hot day in May of last year, she arrived with just 15 minutes' notice at Alice Deal Middle School in Washington, D.C.

Beyonce's video had just hit the Internet, and students had spent a few gym classes practicing the choreography. All the students were outside on the playground when Mrs. Obama arrived, wearing black slacks and a bright yellow blouse that showed off those arms.

The beat kicked in, the cameras started rolling and the first lady started dancing.

"I was surprised when she did the dances," recalls health and physical education teacher Michelle Ortiz, who spent some time speaking with Mrs. Obama. "She mentioned that she didn't know the choreography, but that she would give it a shot."

She did what the kids did: the running man, the Dougie, the jump rope thing. She picked up the moves quickly. She spoke to the crowd, then asked if they wanted to dance some more.

"Lots of times kids have an issue because they don't have a connection with an adult," Ortiz says. "Like, you could never possibly understand what it's like to be a kid. Now the first lady is doing a dance that we like to do. It shows like, wow, she's still in touch."

Quite literally: "She gave me a hug," Ortiz says. "She smelled really good, like nice perfume. I didn't realize how tall she was."

Assistant principal Diedre Neal got one, too, and said it didn't feel obligatory: "It's like hugging a family member. It's not something you can fake. . It's more comforting, I wouldn't say strong. Solid and comforting. Motherly."

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The Associated Press In this June 5, 2012, file photo, first lady Michelle Obama points out a fig tree as she talks about the White House Kitchen Garden during an interview with The Associated Press, on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

In the fall of 2011, she was on a trip to promote Joining Forces, another initiative that, among other things, has helped 50,000 veterans and military spouses get jobs, with commitments from 1,600 companies to hire at least 160,000 more. While being introduced with the vice president's wife, Jill Biden, at a NASCAR race in Homestead, Fla., boos could be heard from the crowd.

Never mind that she was standing with an Army sergeant who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, his wife and their three children. Clearly, there was something about her persona the crowd did not like.

The next day, Rush Limbaugh described it:

"We don't like being told what to eat; we don't like being told how much to exercise; we don't like being told what we've got to drive; we don't like wasting money; we don't like our economy being bankrupted. We don't like 14 percent unemployment," the radio titan said, segueing from Mrs. Obama's programs to conservative views of her husband's policies.

"I'll tell you something else," he told his audience, estimated at 15 million people per week. "We don't like paying millions of dollars for Mrs. Obama's vacations."

The vacations. Few of Mrs. Obama's public moves have been widely labeled as gaffes, but a trip to Spain in the summer of 2010 dealt a brief blow to her otherwise steady popularity numbers.

A longtime Chicago friend was taking her daughter to Spain, and she asked Mrs. Obama to come with her younger daughter, Sasha. Despite warnings from advisers, she went, during the depths of the recession, during a week when 131,000 jobs were reported lost.

Although rules required her to reimburse the equivalent of first-class airfare, and her friends flew separately and paid for their own hotel rooms, taxpayers spent $467,585 on costs such as Mrs. Obama's jet, Secret Service protection, and food and lodging for accompanying staff, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch, a conservative public integrity group.

When she traveled to Aspen, Colo., in February, without the president, conservative websites listed it as the Obama family's 16th vacation since taking office. (Opinions vary along political lines on how the Obama vacations compare to those of previous first families.)

Mrs. Obama's clothes also have been a target.

The Obamas are worth millions thanks to the president's best-selling books, and Mrs. Obama earned more than $300,000 in 2006 as a hospital vice president and board member. Although she makes a point of wearing inexpensive fashions from places like J. Crew and H&M, she has occasionally sported things like $515 Lanvin sneakers while volunteering at a food bank, and a $6,800 J. Mendel jacket at a Buckingham Palace reception with Queen Elizabeth II during the Olympic Games in London. (Not to mention the silvery, leather-esque jeggings she wore to the Kids Choice Awards).

All this comes on top of claims that she holds a grudge against America for its past racial sins.

On the campaign trail in 2008 she famously said: "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change."

The conservative National Review magazine quickly put her on the cover with the headline "Mrs. Grievance." The story made a claim that remains inseparable from her image on the right: "Michelle Obama embodies a peculiar mix of privilege and victimology, which is not where most Americans live."

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The Associated PressIn this May 5, 2010, file photo, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attend a celebration of Cinco de Mayo in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

Hillary Clinton was another Ivy League lawyer with a high-powered career who stood on equal footing with her husband. But Mrs. Obama has shown no desire to run for office, and her beauty and style are essential to her image while Mrs. Clinton's appearance was often mocked.

Like Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Obama is said to offer frequent advice to her husband, and is deployed often on the campaign trail to articulate and explain the president's beliefs. But Mrs. Obama has not been accused of meddling in policy, a perception that dogged Mrs. Clinton.

Jacqueline Kennedy? Like Mrs. Obama, she was seen as a glamorous, modern presence who brought change to the White House — but JFK never referred to his wife as "the boss."

Carl Sferrazza Anthony, a historian with the National First Ladies' Library, says Mrs. Obama shares something with Clinton, Kennedy, Betty Ford and Eleanor Roosevelt: Her public persona is very close to who she is.

"When in public, Mrs. Obama does not clip herself to the point of repressing her intentions or viewpoint," says Anthony, who has spent time with 10 presidential wives, from Mrs. Kennedy to Mrs. Bush. "She has defined herself by looking at how she could adapt the traditional roles of a first lady to her own personality."

That's what Mrs. Obama described in a conversation with reporters last February:

"Ultimately, the role has to be defined by the individual. Because not every first lady or first spouse is going to be me. They're not going to think like me. . Part of what I say to women, part of what we fought for is choice — not just one definition of what it means to be a woman."

Anthony has not yet spent meaningful time with Mrs. Obama. He met her once, for less than a minute, in a receiving line at a White House Christmas party.

"She gave laser focus to me as an individual," Anthony recalls. He made an obscure joke that the president brushed off. But it drew a laugh from the first lady.

"It was just a few moments," he says, "but it was like she used those few seconds to let me know she knew who I was."

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The Associated PressIn this Aug. 25, 2008, file photo, Michelle Obama, wife of then-Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and daughters Malia, left, 10, and Sasha, right, 7, wave to the audience the Democratic National Convention in Denver. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

One night in 2007, about 20 women gathered in a home in Bow, N.H. They stuck name tags on their shirts, sat in folding chairs and waited for Mrs. Obama to arrive.

Kathyrn Thesing was among them. Her daughter Erin — the schoolteacher who would later introduce the first lady in Philadelphia — had asked her to come. Mrs. Thesing had never been involved in politics, had never even talked politics with other people. But Erin was interested in these people, so she went.

"Right away her presence fills the room," Mrs. Thesing remembers. "She had confidence, she was alluring, very tall, very beautiful. She just catches your attention."

Speaking without notes, she told the New Hampshire women her story, and why she and her husband wanted to serve the country.

Mrs. Thesing had settled in no-stoplight Hopkinton, N.H., after moving around the country with her husband, who had been an Air Force doctor. She stayed home to raise two daughters and a son, and the whole family did volunteer work.

She does not remember if there was a hug. Still, she felt an immediate connection to this sophisticated Chicagoan who was dedicated to her daughters, gave so much credit to her own mother and wanted to change things for the better in America.

"The idea of being just like we are, raising our children to get a better education," Mrs. Thesing says of Mrs. Obama's message that evening. "How her father had challenges, her mother worked really hard, we all could relate to that. How far she went with her education, and how she has been able to use it."

Ever since that night four years ago, Mrs. Thesing has been volunteering for the Obamas. She still can't quite explain what happened.

"I had never been involved in politics before," she says. "I was just drawn in."

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Jesse Washington is a national writer for The Associated Press. He can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/jessewashington or jwashington(at)ap.org.

Long before Mitt Romney became the millionaire candidate from Massachusetts, he was his father's son, weeding the garden in the upscale suburb of Detroit where he grew up.

The Associated PressIn this July 6, 2012, file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks about job numbers at Bradley's Hardware in Wolfeboro, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

Long before Mitt Romney became the millionaire candidate from Massachusetts, he was his father's son, weeding the garden in the upscale suburb of Detroit where he grew up. He hated the chore. But he idolized the man who made him do it — George Romney, the outspoken, no-nonsense, auto executive turned politician.

Romney shares an uncanny physical resemblance to his father, with the same graying temples and square jaw. And their lives have followed strikingly similar paths. As young men, both spent time abroad as Mormon missionaries and then passionately pursued the women they would marry. Both were successful businessmen who made personal fortunes before moving into politics. Both were church leaders, governors and aspiring presidential candidates.

Romney frequently invokes the memory of his father on the campaign trail. Photographs of George Romney adorn his campaign bus and headquarters in Boston.

"If people understood that equation of George Romney and his impact on my life and on Mitt's life, they wouldn't be so curious about why Mitt is running for president," Romney's wife, Ann, said in 2007, when her husband first sought the presidency. "He is why Mitt is running."

The biggest difference between father and son? Personality.

George Romney was a garrulous, engaging, shoot-from-the-hip politician who stuck to his principles and said what he believed — to his political peril. With his 17-year-old son by his side, he stalked out of the 1964 Republican convention after trying unsuccessfully to promote a plank in the party platform denouncing extremism. In 1967, he was drummed out of presidential politics after saying he had been "brainwashed" by American generals into supporting the Vietnam War while touring Southeast Asia two years earlier.

Romney's candidacy — he was then a leading contender for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination — never recovered.

His son never forgot.

"It did tell me you have to be very, very careful in your choice of words," he said in 2005. "The careful selection of words is something I'm more attuned to because Dad fell into that quagmire."

Critics say the father who railed against conservative extremism would hardly recognize the son's accommodations to those on the right. Or his complete reversal on key issues — abortion, gun control, tax pledges and gay rights — that leave even some supporters scratching their heads about Romney's core beliefs.

"Multiple Choice Mitt," Edward M. Kennedy famously dubbed Romney during their 1994 U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, a charge that still echoes.

Romney doesn't attempt to explain the changes, other than to say he has "evolved" on issues.

"I'm as consistent as human beings can be," he told a New Hampshire editorial board last year.

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The Associated PressIn this March 20, 2012, file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and his wife Ann wave as they leave at an election night rally in Schaumburg, Ill., after winning the Illinois Primary. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)

Friends and family testify to his fine impulses, but those who do not know him well must see past his stiff, sometimes painstakingly scripted responses. They must look for patterns in his political zigzags, and try to account for his extraordinary ambition. Unavailable and unrevealing, the candidate is far from an open book.

But some of the influences that helped make Romney the man he is are apparent. His father, for one. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which, for believers, is considered as much a way of life as it is a religion. Romney, who rarely talks about his faith in public, grew up steeped in the Mormon tradition, which emphasizes family, service, industriousness, tenaciousness and humility.

There is no paid hierarchy in the Mormon faith and male church members serve as lay leaders. Romney spent about 14 years as a bishop and stake president, an ecclesiastical leader who oversaw a dozen congregations and thousands of worshippers in New England. Though he had a demanding business career and was raising five boys, Romney devoted up to 25 hours a week to church duties — giving sermons, visiting the sick and counseling members about everything from work to marriage. He once described himself as a "true-blue through and through" believer, though he has taken pains to declare that the teachings of the church would not influence his obligations as president.

"To understand Mitt Romney," says Ronald Scott, a distant cousin who wrote a biography of the candidate, "you cannot underestimate the influence of his father, or the importance of Mormonism in shaping his life."

Willard Mitt Romney was considered something of a miracle baby by his parents, born in 1947 after a difficult pregnancy. The youngest of four, he was raised in the affluent Bloomfield Hills section of Detroit, where his father was CEO of the now-defunct American Motors Corp., before becoming governor of Michigan. His mother, Lenore, later was an unsuccessful U.S. Senate candidate.

The Associated PressIn this May 18, 1964, file photo, Gov. George Romney and his son, Mitt, look out over the New York World's Fair grounds from the heliport after attending a Michigan breakfast at the Top of the Fair Restaurant. The governor and a large delegation from Michigan are here for Michigan Day at the fair. At right is part of the Chrysler exhibit and behind them is the Ford exhibit. (AP Photo, File)

His prankster reputation was depicted in a darker light in a recent Washington Post article, which described how he and others taunted a gay student, pinning him down and cutting off his long hair. Romney says he doesn't remember the incident and apologized if his youthful "high jinks" offended anyone.

"He wasn't a standout, but there was definitely something special about him," says Eric Muirhead, then captain of the school's cross-country team, who describes a race in which Romney stumbled over and over. Clearly struggling, his teammates tried to help him, but he angrily waved them away. Though Romney finished dead last, the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

To this day, Muirhead says, he has never witnessed such determination.

In his senior year, Romney began dating his future wife, Ann Davies, who attended a sister school to Cranbrook. The young Romney was so smitten that, when he went to France for two and a half years as a Mormon missionary, his father took the young woman under his wing and introduced her to the church. The elder Romney eventually baptized her in the faith.

France was a tough challenge for a clean-cut young American trying to convert wine-loving Catholics to a religion that eschews alcohol, and Romney has talked about the humiliation of having door after door slammed in his face.

But it was in France that he first emerged as a leader. When a devastating car crash killed the wife of the mission president, Romney, who was behind the wheel when another car slammed into his, went on to head the mission after recovering from his injuries.

Former classmate and friend Jim Bailey said that when Romney returned to the U.S. he was noticeably more mature and far more disciplined in his studies.

"It was a life-changing experience and he learned a huge amount," Bailey said.

After graduating from Brigham Young University in 1971, Romney earned dual law and business degrees from Harvard. He headed straight into the business world, joining the Boston Consulting Group, and then Bain & Co., another Boston-based consulting organization. In 1984 he was picked to head its spinoff, Bain Capital, a private equity firm that bought and restructured companies.

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The Associated PressIn this Feb. 2, 1994 file photo, Mitt Romney, right, chairman of the Boston-based management consulting firm Bain and Company, acknowledges the crowd after announcing his candidacy as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass, in Boston. With Romney on stage are, from left to right, his mother Lenore Romney, his father George Romney, former governor of Michigan and one-time presidential candidate, and wife Ann. (AP Photo/Jon Chase, File)

"He was calculating, an intelligent risk-taker, with very high expectations of himself and the people working for him," said Geoffrey Rehnert, one of Bain Capital's co-founders.

Bain made Romney fabulously wealthy. He has a net worth estimated at $250 million.

Romney consistently points to his Bain resume as proof of what he can accomplish, projecting an image of a take-charge businessman who understands what drives the economy and how to create jobs. According to Romney, his company created 100,000 new jobs (numbers that are difficult to verify), and helped grow such retail icons as Staples, The Sports Authority and Domino's Pizza.

But, as his record at Bain has come under increasing scrutiny, it has also raised questions about Romney's core values and style. The Obama campaign has accused Romney of being a job destroyer and "outsourcer in chief" for the factories that Bain closed and the jobs it moved abroad.

Rehnert says the attacks on Bain are offensive to those who worked there, and unfair to Romney because some of the deals that soured were not on his watch. He also dismissed a famous photograph of the early Bain team, with $10 and $20 bills bulging out of their pockets, and clenched between their teeth, as feeding into what he and others say is the biggest misconception about Romney: that he is only interested in money.

In fact, Rehnert said, Romney was so frugal that, although partners were earning vast sums, they worked at cheap metal desks and Romney once chided him for frivolously spending money on a newfangled toy: a cellphone. It was the mid-1980s.

Others described a big-hearted businessman who put family firmly first. In 1996, Romney shut down the company after a managing director's 14-year-old daughter went missing after a party. The entire staff was dispatched to New York, where they fanned out with fliers and search teams. She eventually was found at a friend's house.

This is the generous boss Cindy Gillespie remembers from the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Gillespie, later a top gubernatorial aide, hadn't known Romney very long when her father lapsed into a coma after heart surgery. Romney, she said, called her at the hospital every day. Later, after her father recovered, Romney picked him to participate in the Olympic torch relay as the representative Vietnam veteran.

"It was the highlight of his life," Gillespie said of her father.

Others testify to similar acts of kindness during Romney's time as church leader in the 1980s and 1990s. Douglas Anderson, dean of the business school at Utah State University and a longtime family friend, describes how the Romneys opened their house to his family for a month after the Anderson house burned down. Others describe Romney piling his boys into his truck to help someone move house, fixing a church member's leaking roof or tackling a hornet's nest for a friend.

But there was also an authoritarian side that struck some as self-righteous and cold.

As a young bishop in 1983 Romney learned that a married mother of four in his ward had been advised by doctors to terminate her latest pregnancy as she was being treated for a potentially dangerous blood clot. Her stake president already had approved, when Romney arrived at the hospital and sternly urged her to reconsider. "As your bishop," she said Romney told her, "my concern is with the child."

Recalling the incident in Scott's book, the woman, Carrel Hilton Sheldon said: "Mitt has many, many winning qualities but at the time he was blind to me as a human being."

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The Associated PressThis 1957 family photo provided by Romney for President, Inc., shows George Romney, left, and son Mitt Romney, right, in their Detroit, Mich., home. Long before Romney became the millionaire candidate from Massachusetts, he was his father' son, weeding the garden in the upscale suburb of Detroit where he grew up. He hated the chore. But he idolized the man who made him do it _ George Romney, the outspoken, no-nonsense, auto executive turned politician. (AP Photo/Romney Family Via Romney For President, Inc.)

"Never get into politics too young," he'd say. "Only after you've proven yourself somewhere else, and your kids are raised."

Romney's first foray into politics, in 1994, struck some as political insanity. Prodded by his father, Romney challenged Sen. Kennedy, the so-called "liberal lion" from Massachusetts, one of the most Democratic states. Romney presented himself as pro-choice, a champion for gay rights and in favor of gun control — among numerous positions he later reversed. The pundits accused him of trying to be "more Kennedy than Kennedy."

Initially the squeaky-clean newcomer did well in the polls, unnerving the Kennedy campaign. But once the Kennedy machine swung into full gear, Romney's campaign faltered. Foreshadowing the attack ads of today, Kennedy aggressively went after Romney's record at Bain, casting him as a cold-hearted capitalist willing to do anything for profits. For the first time, Romney's religion was also publicly scrutinized.

Romney, who refused to run negative ads against Kennedy, said later that he learned valuable lessons from his defeat, that "if fired upon, you return fire."

Back at Bain, he was restless for a new challenge. It came in 1999 when Romney was recruited to, as he puts it, "rescue the Winter Olympics." At the time, the 2002 games in Salt Lake City had become mired in a bribery scandal and faced a massive deficit. The organizing committee needed a white knight, and Romney eagerly hurled himself into the job.

But while many credit him with turning around the Olympics and invigorating a demoralized staff, others say he magnified the extent of the financial problems, unfairly vilified earlier executives and was as intent on promoting himself as much as the games. Romney's image even appeared on a number of Olympic pins, which struck some as narcissistic.

"It was obvious that he had an agenda larger than just the Olympics," Robert H. Garff, chairman of the organizing committee, said in 2007.

Sure enough, after a triumphant return to Boston, Romney wasted no time in launching his bid for governor of Massachusetts. He was sworn in on Jan. 2, 2003, placing his hand on the same Bible his father had used when he was sworn in as governor of Michigan.

Romney's immediate task was to tackle a $3 billion budget deficit, and, according to Gillespie, he approached it with the same laser focus and open-minded approach he had used on the Olympic deficit.

"He doesn't micromanage," Gillespie said. "He gets strong people, starts a methodical review, asks questions about everything, gets clarity and makes his decision."

Romney instituted a series of spending cuts and fee increases — critics equated them to taxes — for many state licenses and services. But his signature achievement was health care reform. Reaching out to Democratic leaders, Romney succeeded in passing a health care law that requires everyone in Massachusetts to buy insurance or pay a penalty. The law, which Romney signed with great pomp on the steps of Faneuil Hall with Kennedy at his side, became the model for the national version pushed by Obama and recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — a law Romney has vowed to repeal if elected.

The Associated PressIn this July 18, 2006, file photo, Gov. Mitt Romney, right, looks over bolts in the ceiling of a Big Dig tunnel while speaking with Alexander Bardow, center, Massachusetts Director of Bridges and Structures, and Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation John Cogliano in Boston. (AP Photo/David L Ryan, Pool)

He had a testy relationship with the Democratic-controlled Legislature, and spent little time cultivating the usual social or political relationships of the office. There was a palpable sense that his one-term governorship was a springboard to loftier goals.

At a recent Obama rally on the Statehouse steps, Democratic legislator Pat Haddad suggested that, if Romney is elected president, "you're gonna get the same guy who never wanted to engage the Legislature. He never wanted to look for new jobs; he was always only looking for his next job."

Today, Romney is back on the trail in pursuit of that job — one that eluded him four years ago when he lost the Republican nomination to John McCain. This time around, he is noticeably more confident, and seems more comfortable in his own skin. Yet, as much as he tries to humanize himself by, for example, tweeting about Carl Jr.'s jalapeno chicken sandwich or his trip to a local barber, the 65-year-old candidate cannot shake the image of someone whose wealth and privileged life have insulated him from ordinary people.

Some of his off-the-cuff remarks haven't helped, such as saying his wife "drives a couple of Cadillacs" and that he didn't really follow NASCAR too closely but has some friends who are team owners. Nor have media reports about plans to quadruple the size of his $12 million waterfront house in La Jolla, Calif., plans that include a split-level garage with an elevator. Romney also owns homes in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Utah.

Friends say such an image is utter distortion. In person, they say, Romney is warm and engaging, with a penchant for bursting into song. Romney singing "America the Beautiful" used to be a fixture of his early campaign appearances.

Philip Barlow, a professor of Mormon history at Utah State who served with him in church described a meeting years ago in which Romney glided backwards across the room in a perfect rendition of Michael Jackson's "moon walk."

"He just has a certain personality and style," Barlow said, "Even when he's relaxing at his beach house in shorts flipping burgers and joking, there is still an elegance or formality about him."

Others see a kind of patrician entitlement, a sense that Romney feels superior to most, destined even, to hold the highest political office in the land.

Some observers simply don't know what to think

Tony Kimball, who served as executive secretary during Romney's stint as stake president, said that while he has tremendous respect and affection for his friend, he is baffled by the candidate's ever-shifting positions on issues and his opaqueness on policy.

"I don't have a clue who this guy is right now," said Kimball, a retired professor of government and politics. "But he is not the person I worked with back in the '80s and '90s."

Kimball said he will not be voting for Romney.

But family friend Douglas Anderson, a Democrat who voted for Obama in the last election, said he will vote for Romney.

"While I am very sympathetic to many of the goals of President Obama," Anderson said, "I think Mitt Romney is an extraordinary individual with the capacity to make an enormous contribution to this country. And I am eager to see him have that chance."

Nearly four years after Barack Obama was elected to the most powerful office in the most powerful country in the world, the question remains: Who is he?

The Associated PressPresident Barack Obama speaks during an campaign fundrasising concert at the Fillmore Miami Beach at the Jackie Gleason Theater, Tuesday, June 26, 2012, in Miami Beach. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

By JERRY SCHWARTZ, Associated Press

Nearly four years after Barack Obama was elected to the most powerful office in the most powerful country in the world, the question remains: Who is he?

He seemed to come out of nowhere. He had served seven years in the Illinois Senate, and less than four years in the U.S. Senate — a meager political resume, augmented by a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

His was an exotic story, at least by the standards of the 42 white men who preceded him in office. Son of a black African and white Kansan, born in Hawaii, raised there and in Indonesia, he was something new, and America seemed ready for him. He won almost 9.5 million votes more than John McCain.

And yet, "there was the feeling that we knew less than we needed to know" about our new president, says Janny Scott, author of "A Singular Woman," a biography of Stanley Ann Dunham, Obama's mother. "He didn't fit a comfortable template."

Four years have passed. We have watched Obama as commander in chief, waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and we have seen him accept the Nobel Peace Prize. We have seen him grapple with a dismal economy and a relentless opposition. We have been spectators to a grueling fight over health care from which he emerged victorious — if only just barely. All of this in the glare of a fierce and unyielding media spotlight.

By now, we should have a fix on the man who is asking for a second term.

But still we ask: Who is Barack Obama?

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The Associated PressPresident Barack Obama reads his statement to photographers after making a televised statement on the death of Osama bin Laden from the East Room of the White House in Washington, Sunday, May 1, 2011. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

"These are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night," Obama said, to peals of laughter. "Well-handled, sir. Well-handled."

What his audience didn't realize — what few people knew at that moment — was that Obama had, just hours before, given the go-ahead for the mission that would claim the life of America's Public Enemy No. 1, Osama bin Laden. It was a huge gamble, perhaps the biggest of Obama's presidency.

"If that failed, it really would have been a political disaster," says historian Robert Dallek, who has written books on presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan. "It would have been reminiscent of Jimmy Carter and the helicopter going down in the Iranian desert" in an ill-starred effort to rescue American hostages from Tehran.

If Obama was nervous, he kept it hidden. In fact, he played nine holes of golf the next morning, before returning to the White House to monitor the unfolding mission during what he later described as "the longest 40 minutes of my life."

It was retired Air Force Chief of Staff Tony McPeak, an Obama supporter, who first called him "No-Drama Obama" during the 2008 campaign. The nickname stuck, perhaps because sang-froid is central to Obama's personality.

"That measured approach to everything characterizes a lot of what he has done ...," says David M. Kennedy, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian. "It's kind of remarkable how he has stayed in character, as if he were the calm, cool grown-up in the room."

This has not always worked in his favor; he has frustrated supporters who say he does not express righteous anger when he should.

Kennedy recalls that in 1936, when FDR was running for his second term, he declared the start of the second New Deal — and pronounced himself ready to take on the many, moneyed powers aligned against him: "They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred."

Obama, Kennedy says, is "temperamentally incapable" of taking that kind of stand. "It's just not in his bloodstream."

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The Associated PressThis 1960's file photo provided by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., shows Obama with his mother Stanley Ann Dunham. The Kansas-born mother, the Kenyan-born father, Barack Obama Sr., met at the University of Hawaii. They marriage, and Barack, "blessed" in Arabic, was born on Aug. 4, 1961. (AP Photo/Obama Presidential Campaign, File)

Not that everyone believes the Obama story.

Drive along Interstate 78, near Fredericksburg, and you'll see a billboard in the gentle, rolling hills of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. It bears just five words: "Where's the real birth certificate?" ''Real" is in red, the rest in black.

The name "Barack Obama" is nowhere to be found, but there is no mistaking the message. More than a year after the White House released copies of the birth certificate on file in Hawaii, a conservative website still questions whether the president is an American.

The "birthers" are easy to marginalize; a Gallup poll in 2011 found that only 13 percent of Americans believed Obama was probably or definitely born in another country. But how to account for a recent Pew Research Center poll that found that only 49 percent knew Obama is a Christian? Perhaps it's just that his name sounds unusual to many American ears.

The fact is, as certified by the state of Hawaii, Barack Hussein Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu. His birth certificate lists his mother's race as "Caucasian" and his father as "African." In June of the next year, his father — a brilliant economist from Kenya — would leave his young family to study at Harvard. He would never return.

His son would tell the story in his own memoir, "Dreams from My Father," and it would be retold — with additions and amendments — by others, including Scott, New Yorker editor David Remnick and Washington Post writer David Maraniss. The outlines basically remain the same:

— How he spent his youth alternately in the care of his grandparents in Hawaii and his mother, who moved to Indonesia and a short-lived marriage to a geologist there. In Indonesia he would eat dog and snake; in Hawaii he would sample marijuana, and sample it some more.

—How he went on to Occidental College, Columbia University and Harvard Law, and along the way struggled to come to terms with his identity as a black man of mixed heritage in a white society. Genevieve Cook, a girlfriend of Obama's from New York, told Maraniss how "he felt like an impostor. Because he was so white. There was hardly a black bone in his body." And that she would later realize that, "in his own quest to resolve his ambivalence about black and white, it became very, very clear to me that he needed to go black."

—How he ended up in Chicago as a community organizer, working on the South Side. In doing so, he would credit his mother and her work in Indonesia as his inspiration.

Much has been made of the omissions and inaccuracies found by Obama's biographers in his memoir. For example, Obama did not identify Cook, and would acknowledge later that he conflated her with another girlfriend. Some of Obama's opponents saw these discrepancies as evidence of slickness, or even con-artistry.

In her research, Scott found that Ann Dunham did not lack health insurance when she was dying of cancer, as her son would claim in pressing for his health care overhaul. Instead, she lacked disability insurance that would have paid other expenses.

"I don't see these things as an indictable offense," Scott says, chalking it up to a "failure of memory."

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The Associated PressPresident Barack Obama speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, June 28, 2012, after the Supreme Court ruled on his health care legislation. (AP Photo/Luke Sharrett pool)

"The president is an intellectually ambitious man who is temperamentally cautious," says Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton.

For health care, he was all in.

"I don't think a system is working when small businesses are gouged and 15,000 Americans are losing coverage every single day; when premiums have doubled and out-of-pocket costs have exploded and they're poised to do so again," Obama told a gathering of Republican lawmakers in 2010. "I mean, to be fair, the status quo is working for the insurance industry, but it's not working for the American people. It's not working for our federal budget. It needs to change."

The Republicans did not agree, and though his party had control of the House for the first two years of his presidency, Obama had to compromise again and again to ensure that he could hold on to every Democratic vote in the Senate, because he needed every vote.

In 2008, Obama offered the promise of a post-partisan age. That glimmering vision died in the debate over health care.

All along the way, Obama encountered lock-step opposition from Republicans. The most dramatic example, perhaps, was last summer's confrontation over raising the debt ceiling, in which the country came perilously close to defaulting on its obligations. Obama thought he had reached a "grand bargain" with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to cut spending and raise revenues, but then Boehner walked away. The Republicans insist they never neared an agreement.

Some opponents have charged that Obama was advancing socialism. His government did take over much of the auto industry for a time, seeing General Motors and Chrysler through bankruptcy. He did press for stronger regulation of the financial industry in the wake of the crisis that launched the Great Recession, and like most Democratic administrations his government is generally more bullish on regulation than are Republicans.

But daunted by the challenge of winning congressional approval, he sought a smaller stimulus than many thought necessary. His efforts to protect homeowners threatened with foreclosure have come up short. And surprisingly few bankers — but no high-level executives of major banks — are in jail on charges related to the financial crisis.

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The Associated PressPresident Barack Obama reaches into the crowd to greet troops at a rally during an unannounced visit at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, Friday, Dec. 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

He is clearly not a pacifist, though he was elected on a pledge to end the Iraq War, and he did.

But he also sent men to kill bin Laden. He helped engineer the international campaign that ended the life and regime of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. He decimated the leadership of al-Qaida, cutting them down from above with a drove of drones.

And he escalated the war in Afghanistan, threading the needle between generals who wanted an even larger force and his own vice president, Joe Biden, who wanted to pull troops out. In his book, "Obama's Wars," Bob Woodward describes a president who is deeply involved in planning, one who recoiled when military leaders tried to convince him that his only real option was to send 40,000 troops with an open-ended commitment.

"I'm not going to make a commitment that leaves my successor with more troops than I inherited in Afghanistan," Obama said.

In the end, he decided to send 30,000 more troops immediately, and to begin to withdraw them in July 2011.

He would later tell Woodward that he was too young to be burdened with "the baggage that arose out of the dispute of the Vietnam War" — he didn't feel any adversarial relationship with the military, or "a hawk/dove kind of thing."

Nor was he worried about defeat. "I think about it not so much in the classic, do you lose a war on my watch? Or win a war on a president's watch? I think about it more in terms of, do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end of it."

This is a man, remember, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, before he had even served a year in office. When he was informed of the award, he seemed abashed, describing himself as "surprised" and "deeply humbled."

When he accepted the prize, though, he gave an acceptance speech like no other. First, he noted the irony of accepting a peace prize even as he was commander in chief of a military waging two wars. Then, he went on to explain that, while he revered Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., he could not follow their example in every way.

"I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaida's leaders to lay down their arms. ...

"And yet this truth must coexist with another — that no matter how justified, war promises human tragedy. The soldier's courage and sacrifice is full of glory, expressing devotion to country, to cause, to comrades in arms. But war itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such."

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The Associated PressPresident Barack Obama kisses the forehead of 3-week-old Ethan Muhire of Marshalltown, Iowa, on Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2012, during a campaign stop in Marshalltown. Obama is in the middle of a three-day bus tour across Iowa. (AP Photo/The Des Moines Register, Bryon Houlgrave)

"Most people thought he would let his rhetoric do the work for him," says Douglas Brinkley, a historian whose books include biographies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

But "he hasn't told his story well enough," Brinkley says. Obama himself has said as much: "The mistake of my first term — couple of years — was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right," he told CBS' Charlie Rose last month. "But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people."

Many thought that in electing Obama, Americans had chosen a president who would be bold and steadfast in pressing his agenda. Instead, he has drawn criticism from both the right and the left for being too coy, too willing to step back and let others lead.

"Instead of drawing clear lines and putting forward detailed proposals," conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times after the debt ceiling fiasco, "the president has played Mr. Compromise — ceding ground to Republicans here, sermonizing about Tea Party intransigence and Washington gridlock there, and fleshing out his preferred approach reluctantly, if at all."

All agree that he does work hard, and is truly engaged by his work. CBS Radio's Mark Knoller keeps track of presidents' comings and goings. This past May, he said Obama had spent all or part of 54 days at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland. At the same point in his first term, George W. Bush had been there for all or part of 256 days.

This is not to say that Obama is averse to regular-guy moments of fun — say, a quick trip to a burger joint with the vice president. He startled an audience at a fundraiser at Harlem's Apollo Theater by breaking into a few bars of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together."

But the informal Obama is not necessarily convincing. When white police Sgt. James Crowley arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates as he tried to get into his own home and charged him with disorderly conduct, Obama said Crowley had "acted stupidly." (He later would say the phrase was ill-chosen.) To settle the issue, Obama held a "beer summit," inviting Gates and Crowley to come to the White House for a few brewskies. The event was lampooned: "This could be trouble, because the last time Obama got a few beers in him, he bought General Motors," said comedian Conan O'Brien.

Mostly, he remains a dignified and graceful figure — graying, like many of his predecessors, under the weight of office. He is, at heart, a dad, and Brinkley thinks that is one of the reasons his popularity ratings remain high.

"His strongest suit may be in the end that he is such a tremendous husband, a tremendous father," says Brinkley. "Even his mother-in-law lives in the White House."

There's also first lady Michelle Obama; and 11-year-old Sasha and 14-year-old Malia; and there is Bo, the Portuguese water dog the girls were promised as a reward for leaving Chicago to move to the executive mansion.

Obama's fatherly impulses have surfaced at many of the most painful moments of the past four years. When he visited the victims of the shootings in Aurora, Colo., and their survivors, he said he was doing so as a "father and as a husband." And after the killing of a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., Obama spoke not only of his feelings as a parent, but as a man who understood firsthand the possible consequences of skin color:

"If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

No other president could have said those words.

James Taylor made a surprise appearance and serenaded the maestro with "You've Got a Friend."

John Williams

LENOX ­- It's a testament to John Williams' artistic output that a tribute concert to the Oscar-winning composer and former conductor of the Boston Pops can only scratch the surface of his amazing career.

Sure, his 80th birthday celebration at Tanglewood on Saturday night featured music from “Star Wars,” “Schindler's List” and the Harry Potter films, but where were “The Cowboys,” “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Superman,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” etc, etc?”

Of course, it's tough to capture the work of man who has scored 100 films in just two hours.

Some of the biggest applause from the throng at Tanglewood came for compositions not written for film. Williams' recent “Fanfare for Fenway” was conducted by Keith Lockhart and thrilled Red Sox fans in attendance.

Likewise, “Air and Simple Gifts,” written for the inaugural of President Obama, was the musical highpoint of the evening. It featured a stellar quartet: Yo-Yo Ma, Gil Shaham, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill.

Taped tributes to the maestro came from Obama, former President Bill Clinton, and filmmaker George Lucas. Taking the Tanglewood stage to honor Williams were Oscar-winning director and frequent collaborator Steven Spielberg and singer James Taylor, who performed “You've Got a Friend..”

Spielberg, who has worked with Williams for 40 years, said he has been serenaded by fans in foreign countries who hum Williams-composed themes to his films.

Taylor noted that Williams introduced him to his future wife, the former Caroline "Kim" Smedvig, who is the marketing director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra

The night drew to a close with the Boston Pops performeing “Happy Birthday.”

The city hasn't held a public auction of tax-title-seized properties since 1976.

Staff Photo by John SuchockiHolyoke City Councilor Joseph M. McGiverin wants council to have say in property auctions.

Photo by Rob Deza Marcos A. Marrero, director of Holyoke Office of Planning and Economic Development

HOLYOKE – More than 60 properties currently doing nothing could become productive tax-revenue generators if officials can agree on a public auction process.

“What we want to do is get these out to responsible people and get them back on the tax rolls,” City Treasurer Jon D. Lumbra said at a recent meeting of Citizens for the Revitalization and Urban Success of Holyoke, or C.R.U.S.H.

How to proceed with such auctions has been a topic of the City Council Ordinance Committee. Some councilors are concerned an auction process would treat all properties the same when some might need special consideration.

The plan is to auction properties similar to Springfield’s process in which dozens of properties seized for nonpayment of taxes in that city are offered up to a roomful of qualified bidders several times a year.

The understanding is the winning bid won’t equal what the municipality is owed in taxes. But the purchase price gets the city or town at least something, gets taxes coming in again on the property and helps neighborhoods by getting vacant properties occupied.

The properties ready for auction have been through state Land Court and the city now owns them. Another 347 properties are active Land Court cases, Lumbra said, at the July 26 C.R.U.S.H. meeting.

While seizing properties whose owners have failed to pay taxes is the proper step, he said, the city doesn’t benefit by being long-term owners of such non-tax-generating properties.

The city hasn’t held such property auctions since 1976, he said.

“So we’ve been a little behind,” Lumbra said.

Marcos A. Marrero, director of the city Office of Planning and Economic Development, said to a questioner at the C.R.U.S.H. meeting auctioning properties so they can be reused wasn't gentrification, which is a rebuilding with the middle-class or affluent to displace the poor.

"I don't think it's displacing anyone....There has to be repercussions for not paying your property taxes," Marrero said.

Councilor at Large Joseph M. McGiverin is among those who have questioned the process. A 32-year councilor, McGiverin said Thursday the council should have the authority to sign off on all properties before they are placed in the auction queue.

The reason, he said, is not all properties should be treated the same way. Councilors might be aware that an apartment building in a certain neighborhood might be best reused in a particular way that might be lost at a public bidding process. Or the Holyoke Redevelopment Authority might be the avenue for another property, he said.

His way might be more cumbersome than just allowing all tax-title-seized properties to be publicly auctioned, he said.

“I really think the more people involved with a vote, the better the process is,” McGiverin said.

Solutia sold $227 million worth of its advanced interlayers products in the third quarter of 2011, the most recent data available on the company’s website.

Photo providedSolutia -- Indian Orchard plant, Springfield.

SPRINGFIELD – There are no plans to add or reduce staff at Solutia’s Indian Orchard plant as a result of Eastman Chemical Co.’s purchase of Solutia for $4.7 billion.

But another corporate takeover, this one of the Cytec Industries’ self-adhesives business at the plant by German chemical company Henkel for $105 million, will cost 50 jobs at the Solutia plant by 2014, said David W. Lahr, plant manager for Solutia in the Indian Orchard section of Springfield.

The self-adhesives business makes pressure-sensitive glues for things such as beer-bottle labels and medical products. Historically, it was part of Monsanto when it owned the 250-acre Indian Orchard chemical plant, Lahr said. Solutia spun off from Monsanto in 1997 and Solutia sold the adhesives business shortly before filing for bankruptcy protection in 2004. But even after the business was sold, about 50 Solutia employees did the production work for the adhesives at the Indian Orchard plant under agreement with Cytec Industries.

“Henkel has other manufacturing assets,” Lahr said. “What kinds of synergy do they have in order to optimize their manufacturing footprint and control costs.”

The Henkel purchase of Cytec became official on Aug. 2.

“What we are doing now is working through all the antitrust concerns,” Lahr said.

Questions submitted to Henkel’s spokespeople went unanswered last week

Lahr said he hopes to be able to find jobs for the adhesives workers elsewhere in Solutia’s, now Eastman Chemical’s, operations at Indian Orchard between now and 2014.

“We have a lot of good people in that business,” Lahr said last week. “We don’t want to lose them.”

Solutia has 425 employees, 65 percent of that in production, 20 percent in management and 15 percent in science and engineering.



Tennessee-based Eastman Chemical Co.’s purchase of Solutia became final July 2. In a written statement, Jim Rogers, chairman and chief executive officer of Eastman said: “The addition of Solutia will broaden our geographic reach into emerging geographies, particularly Asia Pacific, establish a powerful combined platform with extensive organic growth opportunities, and expand our portfolio of sustainable products, all of which are consistent with our growth strategy.”

Monsanto developed Saflex, a plastic layer that holds together and strengthens glass for car windshields and building windows, at the Indian Orchard plant 70 years ago. Saflex is used in the he windows at the federal courthouse in Springfield.

Solutia sold $227 million worth of its advanced interlayers products in the third quarter of 2011, the most recent data available on the company’s website. That’s up from $212 million the same quarter of 2010. Half of that revenue was in sales in Europe, 19 percent in the United States, 9 percent in China, 10 percent in the rest of Asia and 12 percent in the rest of the world.

Aside from Indian Orchard, Solutia has plants making Saflex in Michigan, Mexico, Brazil, Belgium and China, Lahr said.

Eastman doesn’t have any facilities making a similar product to Saflex.

“There is really very little overlap between the Solutia products and the Eastman products,” Lahr sail. “It was a great fit all along.”

He said it will be helpful to be part of a larger chemical company, though. For too many years Solutia was off on its own.

“Eastman has this core skill about being able to create molecules,” he said.

Saflex needs to be shipped to window and windshield manufacturers refrigerated. If it gets warm it sets up and turns into a solid useless hunk of plastic.

So Lahr said it has to be made relatively close to where it is used. A factory in China can’t easily supply a windshield maker stateside.

The overall market for Saflex rises and falls with the economy.

“It’s solid,” Lahr said. “But what is going to happen with automotive manufacturing? What is going to happen with housing and commercial buildings? Are we going to build a lot of commercial buildings in coastal areas where they need this type of glass?”

But Massachusetts, with its high utility costs, is an expensive place to make Saflex. The company has already installed high-efficiency lighting and electric motors.

“We save enough electricity to light the home of everyone who works here,” Lahr said. “But you can only conserve so much. We are competing regionally and globally.”

Also, it’s hard to find new, highly trained chemical workers. In Texas and Louisiana, places where there are a lot of chemical plants, community colleges have dedicated training programs for chemical workers.

On the upside, Lahr said, Solutia can always find scientists and engineers to work at the Indian Orchard plant. Schools including the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Worcester Polytechnic institute and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., feed that talent pool, he said. 

The player has made a noble but risky effort to play hurt and live up to expectations.

Associated PressCarl Crawford has been a disappointment in Boston, but it's not because he doesn't care. He now faces a decision to have elbow surgery sooner rather than later.

NEW YORK - The next time your watercooler talk centers on Red Sox players who don't give a hoot, do the right thing and give Carl Crawford some credit.

The Red Sox outfielder cares too much - about the impossible task of living up to his contract, about being a good Red Sox guy, and about not letting down the fans.

It is why Crawford has been risking the sight of throwing from the outfield to second base and seeing his elbow chips reach the bag before the ball does.

But if Crawford needs Tommy John surgery, as it is widely accepted he does, the time is now. Weekend reports that he no longer sees the point in delaying the procedure make sense.

Helping his team salvage a playoff spot was the driving reason for Crawford to delay surgery until after the season. That strategy, which carried the risk of making 2013 another lost year, makes no sense with the playoff goal realistically kaput.

It was never the best plan, anyway. Crawford is injured.

Just because the Red Sox want to start getting a return on their investment, or because of Crawford's commendable attempt to start delivering it, does not justify more damage to an already messed-up elbow.

If the Washington Nationals can put Stephen Strasburg's future above a possible World Series run, the Red Sox should not think twice about shutting Crawford down while they live in fourth place.

Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington, who is emerging as a voice of reason in an organization that needs one, says the call is up to Crawford. That's better than forcing him to play, though short of what the club should do.

Leaving it up to Crawford means forcing him to consider doing the smart thing, shut himself down and risk being called a slacker, though I think Crawford is underestimating the fans' ability to understand his situation.

Either that, or he can do the noble thing, which is to keep playing for a dead-end team and risk ruining his elbow.

Crawford's agent says he will follow the advice of the team's doctors. Given the controversy the club medical staff has encountered on occasion, that's quite a statement in itself.

Bobby Valentine was asked about it Saturday. It was one of those moments that showed the manager for all he is - humorous and entertaining, but insensitive and out of the loop.

"Slow news day, was it? I might have to have surgery, too,'' he responded to a question about a condition that could threaten his star outfielder's career.

Valentine has not been on the same page as Crawford all along. He says the outfielder is playing great, and he acknowledges the physical challenges involved.

But within the organization, Crawford has been reluctant to talk with anyone about nailing down a specific schedule for surgery. He believes the Red Sox want him on the field if he can do it.

And yes, fans, he also cares what you think. While John Lackey has been double-fisting his way through a Red Sox tenure that has left everyone feeling they were had, Crawford probably put too much pressure on himself to live up to what was expected of him.

That determination explains why Crawford has yet to undergo a surgery he is convinced he will need. If he were to have it done now, then take the six to nine months required for healing, he might be back at some point between spring training and midseason next year.

Waiting much longer will put him on the shelf for 2013. The Red Sox should be urging Crawford to do it now, not leaving it up to him.

My admiration for Crawford as a person, though, continues to grow. He is not worth the money, for which we can blame Theo Epstein, John Henry and maybe the player's agent.

But he is worth our respect. Crawford has been playing with pain because he wanted to let his team and its fans know he is "all in'' on helping the Red Sox.

The best way to do that is to get this surgery done. Not next month or next winter, but now.

Established in 1984, Hot Mama’s Foods makes fresh, natural, and select organic salsas, hummus, pesto, sauces, salads and dips for regional and national retailers. Morse said many of its products are “private label” brands sold under various store-brand names around the country.

The Republican / Michael S. GordonAugust 17, 2012 - Springfield - Ernest Alejandro of Holyoke, right, keeps an eye on emulsified hummus pouring into a hopper onto of a dual Pack Line machine at Hot Mama's Foods.

SPRINGFIELD – Hot Mama’s Foods is expanding its manufacturing in Springfield with the help of an equipment loan through MassDevelopment.

Hot Mama’s Foods, which has the formal business name of Lansal Inc., borrowed $260,280 to purchase a machine that packages hummus, a spread made from chickpeas, and hummus-like dips.

“It drops the cup, fills it and seals it,” said owner Matthew D. Morse owner. “It’s been up and running since June.”

Hot Mama’s Foods will have hired a dozen new employees in Springfield by the end of 2012 if it keeps to schedule, Morse said. the company has 65 employees in Springfield now and about 60 in a factory near Chicago.

Established in 1984, Hot Mama’s Foods makes fresh, natural, and select organic salsas, hummus, pesto, sauces, salads and dips for regional and national retailers. Morse said many of its products are “private label” brands sold under various store-brand names around the country.

“We have even been able to get our products in Canada and Mexico,” he said.

In 2006, MassDevelopment participated in a $1 million financing package with the Bank of Western Massachusetts – now People’s United Bank – to help Hot Mama’s Foods move to its Avocado Street location and expand in Springfield.

MassDevelopment is the state’s finance and development agency. During fiscal year 2011, MassDevelopment financed or managed more than 300 projects generating investment of $3.8 billion in the Massachusetts economy. These projects are expected to create more than 10,000 jobs, 2,547 of which will be permanent and 8,129 will be in construction. Those projects also include 1,000 new or rebuilt residential units.

James Kitchen sculpture culminates the James Kitchen Public Art Initiative.

SPRINGFIELD- With its head pointed up and its wings gracefully at its sides, the 600 pound bird sculpture erected in downtown Springfield Sunday was an impressive sight.

“I can’t stop smiling,” said James Kitchen, the creator of the sculpture and the featured artist in The James Kitchen Public Art Initiative, which displays local art at various locations across the city.

Kitchen, of Chesterfield, said he is excited to display his art around the city.

The bird named “ Birdicus Gigantium” is 35 feet high and made of recycled steel.

“It’s actually one of the lighter sculptures I’ve worked on. I have one in another part of the city that weights 3,000 pounds,” he said. “It’s the tallest sculpture I’ve made so far.”

The sculpture is the last of 30 pieces displayed across the city and created by Kitchen with recycled materials collected across Western Massachusetts. “There are a lot of agricultural parts and gears, things that are 150 years old,” he said. “ Each piece has its own story.”

The initiative came about after Kitchen met Evan Plotkin, one of the owners of One Financial Plaza. After seeing his work over a year ago Plotkin decided to create a public art gallery.

“He had been keeping this work in his yard where no one could see it and I thought it would be great to spread them out across the downtown area for people to look at,” Plotkin said.

“I am so grateful to Springfield and I think it’s a great city. People are always saying things about Springfield but I talked to one woman who came down over the weekend to look at the sculptures and she walked all over the city, she ate at a restaurant and she felt safe,” Kitchen said. “If we have people coming down to look at the art and stopping to eat at Nadim’s or at the Student Prince that helps the local economy.”

Plotkin, who was involved in the successful sneaker campaign in 2010 “Art and Soles” where local artists painted designs on fiberglass sneakers, said he wants to continue to feature local artists throughout the city.

Plotkin said some of the newest pieces were made by Matt Johnson, an Easthampton artist, who also sculpts metal.

“This is also meant to help artists so that they can get exposure and make a living as artists by selling their work,” Plotkin said. “Through these displays I want to help create a brighter future for the city, one immersed in the creative economy.”

“Birdicus” may be the last sculpture of this series, but Kitchen has no plans to stop.

“I have some ideas. I would like to do a piece created with recycled materials from Springfield,” he said.

The sculpture was placed in an open walk way, owned by One Financial Plaza, which is between Main Street and Court Square.

Plotkin said he hopes this will brighten up the space and attract people to the area to hear music, eat at local restaurants and enjoy the city in a new way,” he said.

He also hopes other businesses will take notice.

“If other businesses see that the art is attracting positive attention to the area and bringing in visitors then we can create a new conversation about the city and what it has to offer,” he said.

In honor of the project tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. there will be live music, food and a personalized tour of the art gallery by Kitchen himself starting in front of the bird sculpture a One Financial Plaza. 

The Patriots host the Eagles for a preseason game Monday night.

AP fileNew England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady (12) talks with Rob Gronkowski during an NFL football training camp in Foxborough, Mass., Friday, Aug. 17, 2012.

Here are a few things to keep an eye on when the New England Patriots host the Philadelphia Eagles for a preseason game Monday night:

BRADY’S PLAYING TIME: Tom Brady may not see much action against the Eagles. He spent the majority of Friday’s practice working on another field with wide receiver Brandon Lloyd and tight end Rob Gronkowski while the rest of the team went through 11-on-11 drills. But, if he does play, it will be interesting to see how he performs after struggling a little bit over the last few weeks.

WIDE RECEIVER BATTLE: No one has stepped up to take hold of the third receiver spot behind Brandon Lloyd and Wes Welker. Deion Branch was limited through most of camp, and Jabar Gaffney and Donte’ Stallworth have done little to standout. Gaffney may not play after coming up lame in Wednesday’s practice, but someone needs to jump out from the pack.

BOLDEN’S PERFORMANCE: Undrafted rookie Brandon Bolden showed good burst and power throughout training camp, but he’s also had some trouble holding onto the football. Considered to be a favorite for a roster spot early in camp, he’s going to have to step up over the next three games if he hopes to become the latest undrafted player to crack the 53-man roster.

HIGHTOWER’S PROGRESSION: Rookie linebacker Dont’a Hightower did some good and some bad in New England’s first preseason game against the Saints. There were a few times where he was around the ball and caused some disruption, but he was also easily fooled on play-action passes and had trouble when dropping back into coverage. A consistently strong performer in practice, Hightower needs to let his positive attributes show up on game film.

FRANCIS’ ENCORE: Like Bolden, a lot will be riding on the next few games for undrafted defensive lineman Justin Francis. A camp darling and practice star, Francis never once shook his blocker against the Saints. He’ll have plenty of opportunity to shine on the practice squad this season if he doesn’t step it up.

CHANDLER JONES: The rookie defensive end was the unquestioned star of the first preseason game with his ability to rush the passer and draw holding penalties. He’ll need to show it wasn’t a fluke if he wants to hold the inside track toward a starting job.

TREVOR SCOTT: Scott has been up and down throughout camp. If he struggles to perform at an elevated level, and Francis starts performing in games, Scott could find himself on the outside when rosters are cut down to 53 players. Scott played well against the Saints, but this upcoming stretch of games will be extremely important for him.

OFFENSIVE LINE’S PERFORMANCE: Guard Logan Mankins is back, though he likely won’t see much, if any, action against the Eagles. But we know what he brings to the table. It’s everyone else that will be under the microscope after a poor performance against the Saints. The man who really needs to show something is left tackle Nate Solder, who underwhelmed in his first opportunity to step in for the retired Matt Light.

UMASS CONNECTION: Emil Igwenagu is trying to earn a spot on the Eagles roster and will serve on special teams and at fullback. He’s also served at tight end for Philadelphia. Like all undrafted players, these games are their Super Bowl and will determine if they get to realize their dreams.

Will Welker continue at his typical rate?

AP file New England Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker (83) during an NFL football training camp in Foxborough, Mass., Friday, Aug. 17, 2012.

Wes Welker has been a focal point of the New England offense since landing with the Patriots in 2007.

Emerging as Tom Brady’s favorite target early in his tenure, the slot receiver has averaged 110 catches per season and solidified himself as one of the most dangerous weapons in the NFL.

But the offense is evolving and becoming more diverse. As more weapons are brought in, someone is going to have to give up a little ammunition so others can flourish.

It’s important for Welker to continue to perform at his typical level if he hopes to be rewarded with the multi-year contract he so desires after the season, but will he have enough passes thrown his way to keep his numbers steady?

We set the line at 110 catches for Welker for today’s topic of discussion.

Erik Frenz, AFC East Lead Blogger: OVER

Three things are certain in life: Death, taxes, and Wes Welker hauling in over 100 receptions when healthy. He will probably still be Brady's favorite target over the middle and on third down despite all the additions at receiver. Plus, playing under the franchise tag, you can bet good money he'll be as motivated as ever to produce.

Mike Dussault, Pats Propaganda: UNDER

The Pats have developed other underneath threats and don't need to continue to overuse Welker. He should still have 80-plus catches but Hernandez, Gronk, Lloyd and even Gaffney should take some catches away from Welker. And I hope that somehow makes him more likely to be back in 2013, but I doubt it will.

Nick Underhill, MassLive.com: UNDER

I’m with Mike on this one. There’s no need to be overly reliant on Welker this season. I know that he’s exceeded 110 catches in four of his five seasons with the Pats, with 2010, when he was still recovering from ACL surgery, being the exception. But the offense has never been as diverse as it is now. Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez should continue to take on increased roles in the offense, and Brandon Lloyd will be a focal point outside of the numbers. There are only so many passes to go around. They have to come from somewhere.

Stay tuned as we roll out a new over/under each morning for the next six days.

Clear skies and cool conditions this evening. A stray shower possible tomorrow.

Another mostly sunny and very comfortable late afternoon finishes the weekend. High pressure will maintain control, and high temperatures will settle near in the upper-70s. Light northerly flow around this high will also keep the humidity levels very low tomorrow ... dewpoints flirting with the 40s! Just like last night, overnight lows will flirt with the upper-40s as well.

On Monday, a weak system will be moving into the region, which may trigger a late-day scattered shower. Other than that, most of the week will be dry and offer plenty of sunshine under a very quiet weather pattern. Temperatures will stay very steady and very seasonal ... the expected highs in Springfield only ranging from 79 degrees to 82 degrees throughout the entire workweek.

Tonight: Clear skies, cool, low 50.

Monday: Partly cloudy, a scattered shower late in the day, high 78.

Tuesday: Mix of clouds and sun, a touch of humidity, high 82.

Wednesday: Mostly sunny, comfortable, high 79.

The Patriots' offensive line is quickly coming together.

Associated PressSebastian Vollmer celebrates with Rob Gronkowski last season.

The New England Patriots' offensive line continues to round into shape.

After getting Logan Mankins (knee) back earlier this week, offensive tackle Sebastian Vollmer has reportedly passed a physical and is set to come off the physically unable to perform list, according to The Boston Globe.

Tight end Daniel Fells also passed a physical and will soon return to action.

The Patriots offensive line has been a weak spot throughout training camp, as the team has been forced to mix and match pieces while players fought to get healthy behind the scenes. With Mankins and Vollmer soon to be in action, the only player now missing is guard Brian Waters.

With Vollmer back, Marcus Cannon, who has been filling in at right tackle, will likely slide down the depth chart and serve as the top reserve.

It is believed that the 35-year-old Waters is contemplating retirement. No indication has been given on whether or not he plans to return.

The Reach Out and Read program has been in the cities for more than a decade.

The Republican / Mark M. MurrayHolyoke Health Center physician Dr.Stephanie J. Billings, left, goes over a book with Dacasty Pena, right and her daughter Vidalyz, 5 months old, during a visit to the doctors' office.

HOLYOKE – Putting a book in her mouth, banging it against the table and pointing at it are signs that 6-month-old Vidalyz Peña, of Holyoke, is developing well.

“What I look for is whether she is looking and recognizing faces and if she can hold the book on her own. At the same time, I’m looking at her posture and whether she can sit up with her head steady,” said Dr. Stephanie Billings, a family physician at Holyoke Health Center.

Holyoke, like Springfield, is a “Bookend City,” which means every pediatrician and family doctor participates in the Reach Out and Read program.

The nationwide nonprofit school readiness program, which was developed by pediatricians and early childhood educators, provides free books to children at their regular checkups from ages 6 months to 5 year -old.

“It’s a wonderful tool to see how a child is developing and, as they get older, what their literacy level is,” Billings said.

Dacasty Peña has four children ages 11, 7, 2 and 6 months, and all of them have been or are still in the program.

“It really does help. My oldest child is constantly reading and is actually above grade level and her siblings all want to read her books,” she said.

Every child who comes in for a visit will get a book based on his or her age and stage of development.

When they are babies like Vidalyz, it’s more important for a doctor to observe their interactions with the parent and doctor as well as how they handle the book.

“If we see a child who is not responding to the pictures or cannot hold the book on their own, that is a sign that something is wrong,” Billings said. “If I see an older child and he or she is still holding the book upside down or cannot recognize colors or words, then those are signs we need to pay attention to.”

Working in Holyoke where there is a large Hispanic population means Billing is often giving children bilingual books.

“We encourage parents to read to children in their primary language. As long as a child is read to they are picking up new vocabulary and learning,” she said.

Peña and her husband take turns reading to the children every night in both Spanish and English. Each child gets his or her own book.

“They like to have their own things and they each want particular stories read to them,” she said.

The program has also been useful in spotting parents who may need parenting courses or also have literacy needs.

“We do have parents who don’t know how to read or particularly cannot read in English. We still encourage them to sit with their child, hold the book and make up stories,” Billings said. “We can also spot any signs that a parent and child are not connecting or that there are issues with postpartum depression.”

There are three Reach Out and Read Sites in Holyoke: Holyoke Health Center, Holyoke Pediatric Associates and Western Massachusetts Pediatrics. Holyoke Health Center and Holyoke Pediatric Associates have both been participating in Reach Out and Read for more than a decade.

According to its website, doctors and nurses distribute 6.4 million books to more than 3.9 million children and their families annually at 4,654 pediatric practices, hospitals, clinics and health centers across the country, targeting those centers that serve children at socioeconomic risk.

“Often times children in lower income neighborhoods, living with a single parent, can slip through the cracks unnoticed. This program allows us to spot any problems and help close the gap,” Billings said. “It’s such a simple thing, give a child a book and read to them and it can change their life.”

For more information, visit www.reachoutandread.org.

The text message that started it came from Gonzo's phone, but reportedly not from him.

Associated PressA new report paints Adrian Gonzalez as a Red Sox conciliator, not a mutineer.

NEW YORK - According to the New York Daily News, departed catcher Kelly Shoppach was the author of the text message that led to a meeting of 17 Red Sox players with ownership in July.

Initially, Adrian Gonzalez was considered the source because the message came from his cell phone.

Rather than serve as instigator, the new report paints Gonzalez in a much more flattering light as a conciliator.

The report portrays him as uncomfortable with an uprising, but one who thought if the were was to be communication with management, it should come from the highest-paid player and not a backup catcher.

Shoppach's relationship with Valentine was never considered good, perhaps partly because the manager was believed to be an early fan of bringing Ryan Lavarnway up.

It boiled over when Jarrod Saltalamacchia got hot and Shoppach became upset over lack of playing time.

Shoppach, who was traded to the New York Mets Tuesday, said he had no responsibility for the Red Sox situation and otherwise declined comment.

A story of the July 26 meeting in New York was broken by Jeff Passan of Yahoo!Sports. While not disputing the meeting took place, Red Sox ownership and players have charged the tone of the gathering was much different than the mutinous setting Passan described.

At the heart of the meeting, his story indicated, was dissatisfaction with manager Bobby Valentine by many of the players.

Several players have denied they were trying to get Valentine fired. David Ortiz did not attend the meeting, but has defended Valentine as a victim of team injuries and undeserving of scapegoat status.